Israel harvesting slain Palestinians’ organs: Palestine’s UN envoy

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations (UN) says the Tel Aviv regime is harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

Riyad Mansour said in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday that the bodies of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces are “returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power.”

“A medical examination conducted on bodies of Palestinians returned after they were killed by the occupying power found that they were missing organs,” Mansour wrote in the letter.

The Palestinian envoy further protested Israel’s “persistent aggression against the Palestinian people” over the past month and the regime’s “insistence on use of violent force and oppressive measures.”

The issue of organ theft by Israel was first brought to the fore in a report published by Sweden’s most highly-circulated daily Aftonbladet in 2009.

US daily The New York Times also said in an August 2014 report that transplant brokers in Israel have pocketed enormous sums of money. Based on the Times analysis of major organ trafficking cases since 2000, Israelis have played a ‘disproportionate role’ in organ trafficking.

The Palestinians whom Mansour was referring to were killed amid tensions in the occupied territories, which have dramatically escalated in recent weeks.