Such stories ought to be known

Ala Dawaya, 21, was on his way to work as a baker when he was shot by Israeli soldiers in the old town of Nablus on 18 December. An ambulance was called and driver Adnan Soso arrived to see the wounded man sitting upright and still alive a few metres from an army Jeep.

'I was called at around 3am to an area known as the onion market,' he said. 'I got there within about three minutes and saw an injured man lying against a wall within metres of an Israeli Jeep.'

He reversed to the end of the street, from where he could still see the injured man and the Jeep. 'Then they started shooting at the man from the Jeep. Every time they shot, the body moved and they waited then shot again, sometimes twice. They shot him about ten times over several minutes,' he said.

Eventually, the shooting stopped and the Jeep allowed the ambulance to approach. 'The man was dead and both his eyeballs were hanging out. I looked at what he had in the black plastic bag next to him. Trousers, shoes and an overall, covered in flour. We put him on a stretcher and got him into the ambulance.

'As we were about to pull away, the Jeep approached. The soldier said: 'Is he dead?' He then asked what was in the bag and I showed him. He asked for the dead man's identification card and spoke on the radio for a few minutes. He then told us to take the body away.'

The ambulance took the body to Rafidia Hospital where it was examined by Dr Samir Abu Zarour. Although not trained in post-mortems, he is the closest thing to an expert in Nablus, having examined 250 shooting victims in the past three years.

'He had been shot between eight and 10 times, including twice in the face and once in the testicles, and had a series of fragmentation wounds in his legs,' he said.