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The family of an 18-year-old Palestinian man who died in the Gaza border protests last week say he was unarmed and shot in the back as he ran away from the Israeli military.

As harrowing footage emerged of the moment the teenager was gunned down, his family spoke out to say he was not a member of Islamist militant group Hamas.

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Abdel Fattah Abd al-Nabi was shot by an Israeli sniper in the back on Friday.

The video shows him running in no-man’s-land while carrying a tyre.


Metres away from reaching a crowd of people, his body crumples to the ground.



The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) defended its actions and has called the footage ‘Hamas propaganda’.

An Israeli soldier aims at protesters during clashes at the border fence with Gaza (Picture: EPA)

Palestinian protesters threw stones and set tyres alight during clashes with Israeli troops (Picture: EPA)

The IDF is said to have claimed the video has been edited and does not show al-Nabi’s potentially provocative actions before he was killed.

But the teenager’s family claim he was unarmed.

‘He had no gun, no Molotov, a tyre. Does that harm the Israelis, a tyre?’ his brother, Mohamed al-Nabi, 22, told the Washington Post.

‘He wasn’t going toward the Israeli side. He was running away.’

Officials said another man was killed by Israeli gunfire in Gaza on Tuesday, Palestinian medics said, raising the death toll from clashes along the border to 19.

Video captures the moment Abdel Fattah Abd al-Nabi is shot by an Israeli sniper in the back as he runs through no-man’s-land on Good Friday (Picture: Safa Palestinian Press)

Abdel Fattah Abd al-Nabishot is seen lying on the ground as other Palestinians run in to help (Picture: Safa Palestinian Press)

Israel’s defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, yesterday said that the military will not change its tough response to Hamas-led mass protests near Gaza’s border with Israel, warning that those who approach the border are putting their lives at risk.

The planned six-week intermittent border protests are expected to escalate again this Friday, with many anticpiating more bloodshed.

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The Palestinians’ ambassador at the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, appealed to the U.N. Security Council for immediate international protection for Palestinian civilians, especially in Gaza.

He charged in a letter to the council that Israel has adopted ‘a shoot-to-kill policy’ during what he called peaceful protests.

The international group Human Rights Watch accused Lieberman and other senior Israeli officials of unlawfully calling for the use of live fire against Palestinian protesters who posed no imminent threat to life.

Last Friday, thousands of Palestinians marched near the border fence between Israel and Gaza, with families setting up camps several hundred meters from the front line.

Protesters plan to call for the right of Palestinian refugees across the Middle East to return to homes they fled in the war surrounding the 1948 creation of Israel (Picture: EPA)

An Israeli soldier aims at Palestinians protesters during clashes with Israeli troops along the border between Israel and Gaza on April 3 (Picture: EPA)

Smaller groups moved closer to the fence, throwing stones, hurling firebombs or burning tires.

Israeli troops were lined up on the other side of the fence, including snipers perched on high earth embankments overlooking Gaza.

Palestinian health officials have said 18 Palestinians were killed on that day, making it the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas.

More than 750 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire, according to Gaza health officials, with others claiming the number of wounded was closer to 1,500.

Plans have been circulated on social media to burn large numbers of tires on Friday, in hopes that thick black smoke would block the view of Israeli snipers.

Hamas has said the protests would culminate in a ‘March of Return’ implying the demonstrators would at some point try cross the border fence into Israeli territory.