Israeli soldiers killed a 65-year-old Palestinian in his bedroom on Friday during a pre-dawn raid to seize a Hamas suspect who lived in the same building, in what the army admitted was a mistake. The man was shot as troops swooped on houses in the occupied West Bank to re-arrest five members of the Islamist Hamas group who had been freed from Palestinian jails just the day before.
The US-backed administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which often co-ordinates West Bank security with Israel, rejected Hamas charges of responsibility for Amr Qawasme's death and said the blame was exclusively Israel's. Soldiers broke into Qawasme's home, one floor above a Hamas militant, and stormed into his bedroom, his wife Sobheye said. She heard shots and found Qawasme lying in a pool of blood. "I was praying when they entered. I do not know how they opened the door. They put their hand to my mouth and a rifle to my head," she told Reuters.
Reuters Television video showed Qawasme had been shot in the head and body. Bullet casings were scattered on the floor of his room, his pillow and mattress left soaked with blood. The Israeli army expressed regret that soldiers who went to arrest Wael Mahmoud Said Bitar - who it said had helped plan a 2008 suicide bomb attack in which an Israeli woman was killed - had killed a man in the house during the raid.
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