Israeli guard shoots knife-wielding girl, 13
A 13-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead by an Israeli security guard in the occupied West Bank after allegedly trying to attack the guard with a knife.
|||Johannesburg - A 13-year-old Palestinian girl, Ruqayya Abu Eid, was shot dead by an Israeli security guard outside Anatot Israeli settlement, near Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, on Saturday morning after allegedly trying to attack the guard with a knife.
“She had quarrelled with her family and was being pursued by her father and brothers as she headed in the direction of the settlement,” Halima Abu Haneya, a resident from the same village of Anata as Abu Eid told ANA.
“The picture of her in the media appearing to show her carrying a knife was fabricated,” claimed Abu Haneya.
The girl's body was later returned to her family by the Israeli authorities for burial.
In a separate incident, the Palestinian News Network (PNN) reported that one of Israel's Chief Rabbis, Shmuel Eliyahu, last week called for Palestinians to be executed, on his Facebook page. “Israeli army has to stop arresting Palestinians. But it must execute them and leave no one alive,” the PNN alleged Eliyahu said.
In 2012, Eliyahu who is also a member of Israel's Chief Rabbinate Council, was charged with making racist remarks, charges that were later dropped by Israel's attorney general.
On Friday in another incident in the West Bank town of Kafr Qaddum, Israeli forces shot and injured three Palestinians with live fire, one of whom was a child, during clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli security forces.
“Nine-year-old Ayat Zahi was shot in the hand with live ammunition as she stood on the porch of her house in the area where the clashes were taking place,” village committee spokesman Murad Shtawi told ANA.
Dozens of Palestinian minors have been shot dead while allegedly carrying out knifing attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers since the start of the current uprising, which began at the beginning of October.
Human rights organisations, and Palestinians allege, that in many of the incidents the minors were victims of “extra-judicial killings” in that the police and soldiers shot to kill and prevented ambulances from treating the wounded, leading some to bleed to death, when the alleged perpetrators could have been arrested.
Amnesty International released a report last October titled, “No Justification for deliberate attacks on civilians, unlawful killings by Israeli forces, or collective punishment of Palestinians”.
The rights group said there were numerous incidents where circumstances indicated “the killings were unlawful, and possibly extra-judicial executions, and used excessive force on a massive scale, including extensive use of live ammunition against people who were not posing an imminent threat of death or serious injury.”
Sweden's Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom recently called for an inquiry into Israel's alleged extra-judicial killings leading to diplomatic tensions between the two countries.
Israeli government officials slammed Wallstrom's statements as false and outrageous.
ANA-AP