A Palestinian toddler was returned from a 10-hour detention by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip with apparent cigarette burns on his thighs, according to medical reports.
Jawad Abu Nassar, aged 21 months, was detained alongside his father, Osama Abu Nassar, 25, in central Gaza on 19 March.
According to the family, Osama had taken his son out at around 10am to buy sweets ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
Osama - who had been grappling with severe trauma after losing his home, his unborn child, and his livelihood during the war - never returned.
“When he left, he seemed to head east instead of west,” Osama’s father, Muhammed Husni Abu Nassar, told Middle East Eye.
“Neighbours called me and said, ‘Hurry, your son is carrying his child on his shoulders and going east.’”
Around 200 metres from the family home in Maghazi refugee camp, Israeli forces are stationed along the so-called “Yellow Line”, a military demarcation established under the Gaza ceasefire that marks the boundary of Israeli control and a no-go zone where civilians risk being shot.
When Muhammed rushed to follow his son, neighbours told him that Osama had already reached the area.
Osama, whose home had been destroyed in an Israeli bombardment, had been living with his wife and their only child in his family’s house. In recent months, his wife had become pregnant but lost the baby amid the hardships of the war.