Video: Israeli forces drag crying 8-year-old boy in Hebron

The footage shows the boy, Sufian Abu Hitah, being pulled by Israeli forces around a neighbourhood in the city of Hebron to identify other boys whom they suspect of throwing stones and a firebomb at a nearby illegal Jewish settlement.

At one point, Sufian is seen being led through a Hebron street surrounded by seven heavily armed soldiers.

On the video, the terrified boy is heard telling the soldiers in Arabic, "Which boy? I don't know who he is."

Later, one soldier leads him up an outside staircase of a building and they walk around the roof.

The boy's mother, Amani, told B’Tselem that she asked a soldier to return her son, but he refused.

"I started crying and ran after the soldiers as they moved from house to house, to try and get them to let him go," she said. 

Eventually, after more than an hour, a number of Palestinian who had gathered managed to pull the boy away from the soldiers' grip and return him to his mother.

Israeli forces denied in a statement on Friday that they asked Sufian to identify suspects in Sunday's incident.

It said a firebomb was thrown at the settlement and that Israeli forces caught a suspect.

"Due to the fact the suspect was a minor he was taken to his parents' home," the statement said.

The military did not respond to further questions, including whether the statement was referring to Sufian.

Hebron has been a flashpoint for decades, including in the recent wave of violence. 

The city is divided, with about 850 Israeli settlers illegally living in heavily guarded enclaves, while the rest of the area is under Palestinian self-rule, making it the only Palestinian population centre in the West Bank with a major Israeli army presence.

Friction is amplified by what Palestinians and Israeli rights activists report as systematic harassment by Jewish settlers.