Deputy Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General Farhan Haq called for an immediate investigation into the Israeli attack on five Palestinian women with weapons and police dogs inside their home in Hebron.
During a press conference, Farhan was asked to comment on the incident where five Palestinian women were forced to strip by Israeli female soldiers in Hebron during a raid in an apartment building.
“This needs to be investigated by the relevant authorities, and we would be opposed to any forms of collective punishment,” Farhan responded.
Earlier on Tuesday, an investigation released by Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem revealed that Israeli female soldiers forced Palestinian women to strip naked in front of their children during a night raid on their homes.
According to the report, dozens of masked soldiers, with dogs, entered homes belonging to the extended ’Ajlouni family in the neighborhood of Khallat al-Qaba in southern Hebron. They threatened, using their weapons, 26 members of the family who were home at the time, and confined them to one of the apartments.
The soldiers handcuffed three family members, one of them a 17-year-old boy, blindfolded them and took them to another apartment. They then separated the remaining men from the women and children, who were kept in the living room and searched them in a separate room.
The soldiers then took one woman to the room where her children, ranging in age from four to seven, were sleeping. The children woke up in a fright. Two masked female soldiers kept the mother from going up to them, and threatened to set the dog they had with them on her if she did not strip naked in front of them. The mother had no choice but to undress and turn around in front of the soldiers, and her frightened children, unclothed.
After she got dressed, the soldiers moved her children to the living room and her to another room, then took three more women and a 17-year-old girl to be strip searched. The soldiers gradually separated all 13 children, ranging in age from three months to 14 years, from their mothers, and kept them in the living room for about 20 minutes under guard.
