The eight-year-old Palestinian child from east Jerusalem’s neighborhood of Beit Hanina who was reported missing on Friday was found dead in a flooded ditch on Saturday morning according to local medical sources.
Rescue forces found Qusai Abu Ramileh at the bottom of the pit after pumping out rainwater flooding it adjacent to a construction site and the boy’s house.
Abu Ramileh’s family reported he had been missing since 4 pm on Friday according to the Israeli occupation police.
Police forces and scores of residents of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina searched for the boy in the area.
Abu Ramileh’s relatives initially claimed that the boy was kidnapped providing the police with video footage in which he was seemingly seen walking alongside an unidentified man. Later the victim’s father said that the boy seen in the footage was not his son. One of Abu Ramileh’s relatives said that the family has no inner disputes nor it is involved in feuds with other families in the neighborhood.
Abu Ramileh went to the grocery store Friday afternoon and never came back his family said. Hundreds marched from Beit Hanina to the Jewish settlement of Neve Yaakov in the northern area of east Jerusalem while searching for the boy.
According to the Red Crescent at least 19 Palestinians were injured in clashes with police forces who blocked roads to the settlement. The police claimed that dozens of Palestinians hurled stones at its officers adding three citizens were detained.
