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Israeli forces killed three Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank on Thursday and threw their bodies off a rooftop in a shocking scene captured on video.

An AP journalist saw three Israeli soldiers pushing the bodies from the top of an adjacent multi-story building in Qabatiya, sending the apparently lifeless bodies falling several storeys to the ground.

It happened following a 10-hour military assault on Qabatiya, where Israeli forces reportedly knocked over pedestrians as they hurtled through the down in armoured jeeps.

Israeli forces had earlier besieged several homes and shot Palestinians dead, reports stated.

"The harrowing scenes from Qabatiya yesterday where Israeli forces were seen throwing at least four bodies off a rooftop, represent more than just potential war crimes under International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law," Lima Bustami, the head of the legal department at Euro-Med Monitor told °®Âþµº.

"Even if these individuals were combatants, the Geneva Conventions are unequivocal, the dead must be treated with dignity and humanity. Acts that mutilate or degrade bodies are strictly prohibited...what happened in Qabatiya transcends the mere legal definitions of war crimes," she added. 

According to Busrami, the act was not an isolated incident or the result of a few rouge soldiers, rather "it is part of long-standing systematic dehumanisation that has characterised the Palestinian experience under 76 years of occupation". 

"Israeli soldiers have no legal grounds to be in Qabatiya or any other part of the OPT, in the first place, regardless of the reason. The only action they should take is to withdraw immediately and uphold international law, respecting the rights and sovereignty of the Palestinian people," she continued, highlighting the recent International Court of Justices' advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Widespread condemnation

The video of the three bodies being thrown off the buildings saw rights groups and Palestinians condemn Israeli forces for the harrowing act of brutality.

"Israeli occupation soldiers throw injured men from a rooftop in Qabatiya outside Jenin in the occupied West Bank earlier today. This is Israel’s ‘self-defence’," Husam Zumlot, the UK ambassador for the state of Palestine wrote in a post on X. It is not clear if the men were already dead or badly injured when they were pushed off the roofs.

"Israeli soldiers pushed three lifeless bodies from roofs during a West Bank raid. Under international law, even enemy combatants must be treated with dignity,"  on social media read.

The former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, also slammed the harrowing footage.

"Under international humanitarian law, soldiers are supposed to ensure the bodies of enemy combatants are treated decently. Yet Israeli soldiers threw the bodies of three Palestinian men from a roof" he wrote on X, adding there was no military need to carry out such actions.

Israel issued a statement, saying they were investigating the incident and claiming it does not meet the military's "values and the expectations" of its soldiers.

Hamas also issued a response to the footage, denouncing the act as "barbarity".

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said the image of bulldozers desecrating bodies and throwing Palestinian civilians from rooftops "should shock the conscience of all Americans and must result in concrete actions by the Biden administration, which is enabling and excusing Israel’s war crimes".

The Euro-Med rights monitor said that while claims of Palestinian fighters doing the same to Israeli bodies have been debunked, this tactic has been used by Israel before.

They highlighted one  published on 12 December which claimed a video showed Hamas members carrying out executions by throwing captives off rooftops but in fact was of Islamic State group militants executing civilians in 2015.

According to the UN, 622 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between October and August, including 126 killed in air strikes, and 11 killed by extremist Israeli settlers.