An 18-month-old Palestinian toddler was allegedly held in detention for ten hours and tortured by Israeli soldiers using burning cigarettes and nails, to force a confession out of the child's father, local and international media reported on Monday.
Al Jazeera reported that the toddler, identified as Karim Abu Nassar was out with his father, Osama Abu Nassar, near the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza on March 21, when IDF personnel opened fire at them.
According to a Palestine TV report citing eyewitnesses, the IDF soldiers ordered the man to leave the child on the ground and approach a nearby military checkpoint, where he was stripped naked and searched. Then the soldiers tortured the toddler infront of the father, reportedly to force a confession out of him.
Palestinian journalist Osama Al-Kahlout interviewed the child's mother who showed the wounds inflicted on the toddler and said he was burnt with cigarettes and a nail was inserted into his leg by the Israeli soldiers.
According to a medical report cited by the TRT World, the child suffered burn marks from cigarettes and puncture wounds in his leg caused by the nail. The child was reportedly released to relatives via the International Committee of the Red Cross after 10 hours of detention in Israeli custody.
Meanwhile, the father, Osama Abu Nassar still remains in Israeli custody.
The incident has sparked widespread outrage with rights groups, activists and politicians condemning the incident.
UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, who recently released a report detailing Israel's systematic use of physical and mental torture against Palestinians, shared a news report of the incident and wrote in a post on X, "What kind of depraved criminals torture a baby to break a father."
In a statement, the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) called the incident a "revolting moral outrage that demands immediate action from Congress."
"No child, anywhere in the world, should be subjected to such cruelty, especially with American taxpayer dollars. These actions constitute grave violations of international law and basic human decency,” the ICAR said.
"Our nation must end its complicity in these crimes. Congress has a responsibility to ensure that American taxpayer dollars are not used to support the torture or slaughter of more children. Every lawmaker with a conscience must vote to end military aid for the out-of-control Israeli regime," it added.
Sharing a news report of the incident, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote in a post on X, "Iran is fighting for humanity. The world is either with Gaza and against this colonial terror regime, or it stands with the Epstein class and child torturers. There is no middle ground."
According to the recently released UN report titled 'Torture and genocide', Palestinians in Israeli custody "have been subjected to exceptionally ruthless physical and psychological abuse" since October 7, 2023.
The report authored by Albanese claimed that "torture in detention has been used on an unprecedented scale as punitive collective vengeance."
"Brutal beatings, sexual violence, rape, lethal mistreatment, starvation, and the systematic deprivation of the most basic human conditions have inflicted profound and lasting scars on the bodies and minds of tens of thousands of Palestinians and their loved ones,' the report said.
"Torture has become integral to the domination of and punishment inflicted on men, women and children, both through custodial abuse and through a relentless campaign of forced displacement, mass killings, deprivation and destruction of all means of life to inflict long-term collective pain and suffering,' it said.
Albanese said she had gathered written submissions, including at least 300 testimonies. According to her, since October 2023, arrests of Palestinians in the occupied territory had "escalated dramatically," with more than 18,500 people arrested, including at least 1,500 children.
The report said about 9,000 Palestinians were still in detention, while "more than 4,000 have been subjected to enforced disappearance." Albanese said Israel’s detention system "has descended into a regime of systemic and widespread humiliation, coercion, and terror."