The Hamas resistance movement has denounced Israel's crimes against Palestinian children as a "sadist" practice.
The denouncement on Thursday comes following the brutal killing of a Palestinian child at the hands of the Israeli regime's forces.
Seven-year-old Rayyan Yaser Suleiman died in the town of Taquu near the city of Bethlehem in the southern part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank earlier on Thursday.
Rayyan lost his life as he and his fellow schoolchildren were being viciously chased by Israeli troops on their way home from school.
According to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority's health ministry, the minor died after falling from a high place during the chase.
Reflecting on the incident, Hamas asserted that the Israeli military's "crimes against Palestinian children, people, land, and sanctities will not grant Israel security," the Palestinian Information Center news agency reported.
Such deadly atrocities, the movement added, would rather "only boost the Palestinian resistance’s strength to defend the Palestinian lands and rights until the full liberation of Palestine."
Citing medical staff at the Beit Jala Governmental Hospital, where Rayyan was pronounced dead, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency said the child's heart had also stopped beating as he was running away from the troops.
The Palestinian boy’s father, Yaser, confirmed that the Israeli troops had chased his son to their house, adding that Rayyan's heart stopped beating because he was apparently so scared, Wafa added.
The father said he put his son in his car and rushed to hospital, but was stopped halfway by Israeli forces, who checked his son. They let him drive on after they had made sure he was dead, Yaser said.