The Israeli military acknowledged Wednesday that it mistakenly targeted two Palestinians carrying a bicycle in Gaza.
The Israelis admitted that a Palestinian man was killed for allegedly "carrying a rocket launcher."
On Sunday, the Israeli army published footage of a drone targeting two men walking among the rubble in the Zeitoun neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip, claiming that one of them was carrying a rocket launcher.
The allegation, however, proved wrong as it emerged that they were carrying a bicycle.
"The army apologizes for this mistake," the Israeli army spokesman’s office said in a statement it was an "erroneous conclusion," in response to a question by Anadolu Agency (AA).
The statement said the initial information gathered before the raid indicated that the two Palestinians were armed.
"When the video was published, the bike that someone was pushing was highlighted, which was mistakenly thought to be an RPG."
According to the statement, the incident will be investigated by the army.
Defending the action, the military spokesman’s office said: "The area filmed in the video is an active combat zone, where many battles took place between Israeli army forces and militants."
The New York Times on Tuesday quoted Mohamed Qariqa, a researcher at the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory, as saying that the two men were returning home after trying to obtain humanitarian aid amid a crippling Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip.
According to the researcher, one was killed and the other injured in the Israeli attack.
More than 31,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion, which caused the death of around 1,160 people and took around 250 as hostages.
