Nur a-Din Yassin, student

This morning [Saturday, 13 September], around nine in the morning, I woke up to the sound of gunshots. I went onto the roof of the house and saw lots of settlers in white clothes attacking the houses in the southeast section of the village. My house is in the center of the village, but I could see what was happening from the roof. Later, I heard soldiers call out on a loudspeaker that the village was under curfew. 

Nur a-Din Yassin in Rafidya Hospital in Nablus. Photo: Salma a-Deba'i, B'Tselem, 13 September 2008.

I went into the house. The sound of firing continued. Afterwards, I heard residents marching in the street. I got dressed and went to ‘Abd al-Basset Ahmad’s house, which the settlers had attacked. When I got there, I saw about fifty settlers of different ages, including children 12-14 years old. They were standing about ten meters from the houses and throwing stones towards the houses. Some used slingshots. Dozens of soldiers were standing next to the settlers. Some were in a shooting position.

Four or five settlers had weapons, two of them had pistols and two or three others had M-16 riles. The soldiers did not stop the settlers from throwing stones at the houses. I saw about twenty young men from the village throw stones at the settlers, and I heard a woman screaming out of fear that the settlers would attack her house. The shouting apparently came from Mahmud Abdullah’s house. People next to me said that his wife was undergoing medical treatment and she was forbidden to get out of bed.

Soldiers shouted at us to leave, and the settlers and soldiers fired at us. Where were we supposed to go? The settlers came to our village and our houses. They’re the ones who have to leave, not us. The screaming by women and children in the houses that were attacked increased. Ibrahim Mahmud Abu Halef's, 31, hand was hit by shrapnel. I saw his hand bleeding. One of the young men held him and took him inside one of the houses to give him first-aid.

The soldiers and settlers stood alongside each other and fired at us. We hid behind boulders to protest ourselves. I saw a soldier kneel and fire at me. A shot hit me in the right leg, near the knee.

Immediately after getting hurt,  young men came over, picked me up, and took me by car to the hospital in Nablus. When we got to the northernmost house in the village, an army jeep there was delaying two ambulances. Three soldiers stood outside the jeep. One of them came over to us, and told us in Hebrew to go home. One of the men in the car told him I was wounded. The soldier looked and saw the blood covering my whole leg. He left and we thought he had allowed us to go to the ambulances, but when he saw us open the door to get out of the car, he cocked his rifle and shouted at us to get back in. One of the  young men with me asked him, “What happened?” The soldier replied, “Wait.” We waited. I was in a lot of pain and was bleeding a lot.

About ten minutes later, the soldiers let one of the paramedics take me to the ambulance. The paramedics bandaged the wound and took me to Rafidya Hospital. At the hospital, they cleaned the wound and took X-rays. It turns out I had been hit by live ammunition and that the bone had been cracked. They bandaged the wound. I have to stay in the hospital for further treatment.

Later, I learned that the settlers attacked us because somebody had gone into the settlement and stabbed a settler.

Nur a-Din Qaher Hussein Yassin, 26, single, is a student and a resident of 'Asira al-Qibliya in Nablus District. His testimony was given to Salma a-Deba'i on 13 September 2008 at Rafidya Hospital.