Separation: A young Palestinian boy rides his bicycle along a dirt road adjacent to the concrete separation barrier built by Israel in the West Bank town of Qalqilya. Image by Getty Images

A report by Palestinian parents that their 6-year-old son was wounded by a gunshot to his stomach in a settler attack in the West Bank was fabricated.

The Israel Defense Forces said that an investigation found that the boy shot in the Palestinian city of Qalqilya, located next to the central Israeli city of Kfar Saba, was playing with a gun, owned by his brother, a Palestinian police officer, when it fired.

Palestinian sources told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the family may have lied to protect the brother, and in order to be recognized as victims of settler terrorism by the Palestinian Authority and receive a payment from the PA.

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The family originally said that an Israeli driver stopped his car on the road outside of Qalqilya and shot at the boy before fleeing the scene, the Palestinian Maan news service reported.

Maan later updated its report to say that the Israeli army rejected the “involvement of Israeli civilians” in the shooting of the boy.

The report said that the Palestinian Authority security service was following up reports about the shooting of the boy “after initial reports from relatives appeared to be false.”

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