After three-year-old Rayan was shot, Abu al-Ajeen said that he immediately began screaming, “My son, my son.”

“My leg was bleeding, and my child was dying in my arms, taking his final breaths. I begged them to let me die but to save my son. They refused and offered no assistance,” Abu al-Ajeen recounted. “The soldiers told me, ‘Leave your son.’ I told them I wanted to save him, but they kept ordering me to leave him.”

The father also said that while soldiers discussed his leg injury, he heard some of them speaking Arabic amongst themselves. “Leave him. Cut off his leg,” they said, according to Abu al-Ajeen.

Abu al-Ajeen recounted that the soldiers did tie his bleeding leg in the end, after which they placed him in a military jeep with his son’s body beside him. “They drove off at high speed over bumps and potholes while I sat in the back, handcuffed.”

“Every time I spoke or asked for help, the soldiers shouted at me, ‘Be quiet.’ They would not allow me to make a sound, even if I were crying from pain,” he said.

The father said that while he repeatedly pleaded for help for his son, some soldiers mocked him. “Are you so worried about your son, calling out ‘Aboud, Aboud’ all the time?” they told him, according to Abu al-Ajeen. “They left me bleeding for six continuous hours.”

They drove him and his son from one place to another inside the vehicle while he bled, Abu al-Ajeen continued. Close to midnight, they abandoned them near Kissufim, a crossing point between Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

As the soldiers dropped him off, Abu al-Ajeen lost track of his son and kept asking them where he was. “And they answered me, ‘your son is next to you,’” he said. “I was shocked to discover that they had wrapped him in a black plastic bag and thrown him beside me.”