Israeli forces abducted a Palestinian child near an aid site in Gaza in June and took him to a notorious prison camp where they subjected him to severe torture for nearly a month, a children’s rights group has found, adding abduction and imprisonment to a growing list of atrocities reported at Israel’s aid sites.
On June 29, after Israel had already killed nearly 600 Palestinians near aid sites over the previous month, 16-year-old Omar Nizar Mahmoud Asfour was detained by Israeli forces and taken to Sde Teiman military prison, reports Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP).
Omar was near an aid distribution site in Gaza when Israeli forces apprehended and abducted him. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reports that Omar was one of 10 children abducted near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) site that day and imprisoned
Authorities allegedy held Omar for 26 days, subjecting him to torture, starvation, and solitary confinement — systematic abuses commonly inflicted on Palestinians at Sde Teiman and other Israeli torture camps. He was never charged with a crime or allowed to meet with legal or humanitarian officials.
Israeli forces have been conducting near-daily massacres near aid distribution sites since GHF began operating in Gaza on May 27, killing over 1,400 Palestinians this way as of August 1. Over 850 of these killings were near GHF sites, and hundreds of others were killed on route to the food distribution hubs.
These massacres have been widely reported. Less widely known is that Israeli forces have repeatedly abducted Palestinians near aid and GHF sites, human rights groups have said — some of the tens of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza and the occupied West Bank who have been kidnapped and imprisoned since the beginning of Israel’s genocide, including at least hundreds of children.
Omar shared his experiences with DCIP. He said that he is still experiencing trauma from his detention, from which he was released on July 24.
“The memories of my detention plague my nights, and I often awaken to the sound of my own screams, as if I were still confined within those walls,” Omar said. “The nightmares are relentless; every time I shut my eyes, the same faces and interrogations replay in my mind.”
Omar was alongside other aid seekers when Israeli forces encircled them, held him at gunpoint, and then forced him and 34 others to strip to their underwear. They were taken to an army site, where soldiers allowed children to leave, but blocked Omar from going with them.
Officers interrogated Omar, but were unsatisfied by his answers. So they brought him to the roof of the building — a hospital in Rafah now used by Israel as an army base, per DCIP. There, they tied him to a rope and hung him, upside down, off the side of the building. At one point, the person interrogating him released more rope, causing Omar to plummet five floors, his head stopping just about half a meter before he hit the ground.
Omar said he was suspended this way for 20 minutes. He struggled to breathe. “It felt as though I was teetering on the brink of death,” he said.
Omar was subject to other torture before being taken to Sde Teiman, where Israeli officers blindfolded him and put him in a one-square-meter cage for three days straight. They then took him to a part of the prison known to detainees as the “Hell Section,” where they subjected him to yet more torture, including beatings, electric shocks, and sleep deprivation; and, later, the “Disco Room,” a “cage-like room” where officers play extremely loud music.
For a week while detained, Israeli officers also interrogated Omar about members of his family, beating him when the answers were unsatisfactory.
“Since the moment I was released, I have been waking up in a state of fear,” Omar said. “My sleep is shallow and fragmented, leaving me unfamiliar with the sensation of true rest. Insomnia is a silent killer, and the exhaustion I feel is not merely physical; it penetrates my very soul, as if the ordeal of detention has merely transformed rather than concluded.”
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