On 9 September 2016, at 7:10 PM, a soldier fired a flare bomb from very short range at 15-year-old Palestinian ‘Abd a-Rahman a-Dabagh during a protest held near the Gaza perimeter fence, east of al-Bureij Refugee Camp. A-Dabagh, a resident of the camp, was killed. The flare bomb hit a-Dabagh above the eye, fractured his skull and remained lodged it in. It stuck to his face and kept burning for a while. Video footage filmed by another protestor and obtained by B’Tselem captured the moments just after the flare was fired, and shows a-Dabagh lying on the ground, with the burning flare up against his face. In a media statement, the military said the troops who were at the scene were not responsible for the incident.
B’Tselem’s investigation found that, as occurs every Friday afternoon, some one hundred youths and children staged a protest near the Gaza perimeter fence east of al-Bureij RC. On the other side of the fence, within Israeli territory, there were about four military jeeps and at least ten soldiers, some of them standing by the jeeps and some on dirt mounds behind the jeeps, toward east. Some of the protestors threw stones at the soldiers. A-Dabagh was among them, using a sling shot. According to eyewitnesses, the soldiers fired live shots in the air and at the protestors’ legs, and also launched tear gas canisters, stun grenades and flare bombs at them.
At around 3:00 PM, a-Dabagh approached the barbed wire fence located about ten meters west of the perimeter fence, together with some ten other protestors. They cut the barbed wire, crossed it, and approached the perimeter fence. The youths got up to a distance several meters away from the soldiers and then went back and forth several times. According to the protestors, the soldiers shot tear gas canisters and flares at them.
The stone-throwing and the shooting at the protestors continued until evening. Shortly after 7:00 PM, after a-Dabagh had retreated 10 to 15 meters away from the fence, one of the soldiers shot a 40-mm flare bomb directly at him, using a launcher.
