[THREAD] On this day 20 years ago, harrowing footage of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durrah being gunned down in Gaza on the second day of the Palestinian uprising on 30 September 2000, sent global shock waves (📸: AFP)
Protests ignited in the then occupied Gaza territory near the village of Netzarim, where sixty families of Israeli settlers live
A group of IDF soldiers had made a two-storey building their outpost in order to guard the Israeli settlement
Early in the morning of September 30, TV crews, photographers and reporters were stationed around the area to record the ongoing clashes
Mohammed and his father, Jamal, were on their way back from a used-car market when they were caught up in the crossfire
In the moments before Mohammed was killed by a number of bullets, he is seen crouched with his father behind a large concrete cylinder as Jamal shouts for the firing to stop and Mohammed tries to hide behind his father
After a hurried internal investigation, the head of the Israeli army’s Southern Command, General Yom-Tov Samia, concluded that its troops were probably to blame for Mohammed’s death
Ariel Sharon, who was blamed for igniting the Second Intifada, called the death "a real tragedy"
Mohammed’s death had a major effect in the region- one of the main streets in Baghdad was renamed The Martyr Mohammed Al Durrah Street and in Morocco, a park was named after him
Two years later, his stepmother became pregnant with another child which she named Mohammed
In 2013, an official Israeli report commissioned by Netanyahu concluded that the television broadcast of Mohammed’s death was distortion, falsehood, fabrication and incitement to terror
Jamal, and cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, who filmed the incident, dismissed the findings
To find out more about the Second Palestinian Intifada, check out our thread on the uprising below 👇
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