The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have acknowledged the killing of two Palestinian men and the subsequent burial of their bodies using a bulldozer, following the emergence of a video depicting the incident on Wednesday.
According to a statement from the IDF, the men approached the IDF's operational area in central Gaza in a manner deemed suspicious and failed to respond to a warning shot. The IDF claimed that due to concerns that the men might have been carrying explosives, they were killed and their bodies were bulldozed.
The video in question, which has been edited and filmed from a distance, shows two men walking along a beach in Gaza, each waving a white flag as a symbol of surrender. One of the men is seen walking towards Israeli soldiers with his hands raised, disappearing from view behind some sand and concrete. The fate of this man remains unclear. The second man turns away from the soldiers and is subsequently seen being pursued by an Israeli armored vehicle. He falls to the ground, apparently shot.
The footage then transitions to another location, unidentifiable in terms of geolocation, where an Israeli military bulldozer is shown burying two bodies in sand and debris. It is uncertain whether the bodies being buried are those of the two men initially shown in the video.
The video commentary alleges that the bulldozer buried the bodies of the two men in a manner that suggested an attempt to conceal the executions by Israeli soldiers.
