In one week, uniformed Israeli soldiers and special forces occupying Jerusalem killed two Palestinians, one at Al Ram checkpoint and another at a checkpoint near the Nusseibeh neighborhood in Beit Hanina. In both instances, the Israeli army claimed that those killed were intending to carry out military operations inside Jerusalem and that they did not heed soldier's orders to stop at the checkpoint and so were fired on. The army also said that the two, one of whom was a young boy, were carrying explosives on their bodies.

But eyewitnesses counter those claims with pictures and testimonies of cold-blooded killings.

Mahmoud Said Abdel Rahim Saleh, 23, was killed by Israeli soldiers and special forces on the evening of March 8. Israeli authorities claimed that he did not heed orders to stop, after which he was shot and killed. Yayhia Al Wari, one eyewitness, says this is not what really happened.

"They executed him in front of our eyes," he says. "I saw a soldier approach him and shoot him in the head with eight to 10 bullets." Al Wari was the only eyewitness of many who had physical evidence to back up his story. He managed to take pictures of Saleh's arrest and execution.

Using his pictures and live testimony, Al Wari recounted what happened that day. "I heard some noise outside so I went to the window overlooking the street. There were a group of soldiers surrounding two young men, one from our neighborhood and the other, a stranger. I saw the soldiers asking the stranger his name and he answered that it was Mahmoud and he was from Nablus."

Al Wari says that the soldiers then pushed Saleh to the ground and a soldier sat on his feet while another tied his hands. A special forces policeman was ripping off his clothes with a sharp knife. "The others were pointing their guns at Mahmoud, clearly frightened," he says.

They kept tearing off his clothes until he was stripped down to his underwear. "Then I heard an argument in Hebrew between the policemen over whether to kill him or not," remembers Al Wari. "When I and a group of men from the neighborhood tried to intervene they started shooting in the air as soon as they saw us approaching. They threatened to kill anyone who got near."

Al Wari says that he and his son Shadi were photographing everything with their family video camera. "Some of the soldiers saw what we were doing and began to shoot at us, hoping they would scare us away. But we didn't listen to them and kept photographing."

"All of a sudden, one of the soldiers approached Mahmoud, pointing his gun at him. Then I saw him shoot eight or 10 bullets at his head."

Screams filled the neighborhood, Al Wari says. "My daughter screamed at the top of her lungs and started beating at the window in an attempt to stop the soldier in his crime. But she failed and until now she is still in a state of shock from the horrific scene of watching the blood spurt from Mahmoud's head and his body shake each time a bullet entered him."

Al Wari continued, "Then they left Mahmoud bleed on the ground for almost an hour. The soldiers moved away from him until an explosives expert team arrived. They sent a robot to Mahmoud's body, which pulled something from underneath him. They then put whatever it was in a circular room-like structure, which I think is especially for explosives."

Al Wari says that even if Saleh was carrying explosives, the soldiers were unjustified in killing him. Saleh was responsive during his arrest and did not resist at any time, nor try to escape. "He did not pose any threat to them, therefore his murder was unjustified. It was pure execution."

Shadi Al Wari, 22, Al Wari's son, helped in photographing the scene. "I was shocked at what happened in front of our house. This was the first time I ever saw anyone killed in front of me." But Shadi says what shocked him even more was the fact that the other young man, Gandhi Odeh, was his own friend.

"The soldiers tied him and took off his clothes and threw him to the ground. I saw one of the soldiers shooting around him because Gandhi was trying to stand up and tell the soldiers that he was from the neighborhood. If he hadn't done that and they didn't find out that he was a resident of Jerusalem, he could have been killed along with Mahmoud."

Odeh is now being held by Israeli authorities, who claim that he was Mahmoud's accomplice in helping him cross the checkpoint to reach Jerusalem. Eyewitnesses, including Shadi, say that Odeh was only traveling on that road by chance and has nothing to do with Mahmoud.

One day later, as Al Wari's family and other neighbors told this story, Israeli soldiers opened gunfire on the same area. When the neighbors and a Palestine Report journalist recording the eyewitness accounts went to the window, they saw that an Israeli army jeep was at the scene. One soldier climbed down from the jeep and destroyed a makeshift monument set up by the children of the neighborhood in honor of the martyred Saleh.

"See what happens to those who are set on killing Israelis," said the soldier to the crowd that had gathered. He then continued to smash the stone monument and spit on the place where Saleh had been executed. "You must learn that the state of Israel is strong and this is proof." He then fired a few shots in the air, got back into the jeep, which took care to drive over the place of Saleh's death, and then sped away.

The children who had erected the monument remembered well how Saleh was killed. "I wanted to help him but I couldn't," said one boy who witnessed the murder. "That is why I got the children together to build this monument, which the soldiers have just destroyed. But we will build it again," he said determinedly. Just after the soldiers departed, they did.

Two days later, Israeli occupation forces shot and killed Izzat Durgham, a young boy, at the Ram checkpoint north of Jerusalem.

Taxi driver Ibrahim Shawish witnessed what happened to Durgham that day. "I saw a youth no more than 14 years old trying to cross the street in front of Al Masri bank near the checkpoint. Suddenly, four soldiers from the special forces standing on the other side of the street started shooting at him. They were only 20 or 30 meters away from Durgham."

"They shot about eight bullets at him, all aimed at the upper body," Shawish says. "He was wearing jeans and carrying a small blue bag that looked like it had clothes in it." Shawish said that he and other people tried to approach Durgham to help him but the soldiers did not allow it. An ambulance was prohibited from approaching the boy, who lay bleeding on the pavement for nearly an hour until the soldiers were sure that he had died, he says. Then an explosives expert inspected the body and the bag using a robot.