Border police said they were defending the fatal shooting of two West Bank terror suspects who had surrendered

Border police are suspected of killing two terrorist suspects who surrendered in Jenin: we feared they would harm us

Border police officers under investigation for Thursday’s fatal shooting of two Palestinian terror suspects in the West Bank’s Jenin after they surrendered and left a building with their hands raised have argued they feared Palestinians would try to harm them, Channel 13 News reports.

The incident was caught on camera and later confirmed by officials, leading to international condemnation.

The Justice Department’s Internal Police Investigations Division has opened a criminal investigation against three Border Patrol agents involved in the incident.

The deceased, identified by Palestinian media as 26-year-old Mahmoud Qassem Abdallah and 37-year-old Youssef Asasa, were wanted by Israel on suspicion of involvement in bombings and shootings against troops. The terrorist group Islamic Jihad in Palestine confirmed on Friday that the two were members of its military wing.

After previously claiming that the suspects did not follow their orders, Channel 13 reported that when questioned by the Internal Police Investigations Division, the officers said that there were weapons and explosives in the terror suspects’ home and that they therefore ordered them to go to a certain area.

At one point, officers ordered the suspects to move out of fear of friendly fire, the report said, without citing a source. One of the Israeli officers suspected that one of the Palestinians was trying to escape back into the house and shot his legs.

Other troops heard the shots and believed they came from terrorists. One of them declared: “There are shots being fired at us.” At that time, officers shot the two suspects, who later turned out to be unarmed, the report said.

“We feared that the terrorists were armed. We saw them fiddling with equipment inside the building. We feared that they would try to harm the armed forces,” they are quoted as saying.