Israeli police shoot Palestinian teenage girls in day of bloodshed

Video captures moment an Israeli policeman shoots cousins, aged 14 and 16, killing one of them after an alleged attack with scissors wounded a pensioner in Jerusalem as two more Palestinians and an Israeli soldier are killed .

Israeli medics move the Palestinian girl Norhan Awwad, 14, who was shot in Jerusalem yesterday. Sebastian Scheiner / AP Photo
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JERUSALEM // Israeli security forces shot two teenage Palestinian girls in Jerusalem on Monday, killing one and wounding the other, after they lightly injured a pensioner with a pair of scissors.

Two Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were also killed in the occupied West Bank, as a wave of violence continued ahead of Tuesday’s visit to the region by secretary of state John Kerry.

Video footage captured the girls’ being shot by an Israeli police officer in the Mahane Yehuda market in the centre of Jerusalem. One of the girls was lying still on the ground, after a passer-by struck her with a chair, when the officer fired into her body.

The other girl appeared to be shot as she confronted another man as he held a handgun. Once on the floor, the police officer fired repeatedly into her body.

The video did not capture the girls allegedly attacking a 70-year-old, a Palestinian resident of Bethlehem, who had a light stabbing wound in his back, Israeli police said. It is thought the girls mistook him for an Israeli.

Hadeel Awwad, 16, died almost immediately, while her cousin, 14-year-old Norhan Awwad was taken to a Jerusalem hospital, where a she was in a serious condition, with two bullet wounds in her stomach, the Palestinian Maan news agency reported.

Hadeel came from the Qalandiya refugee camp. Her brother, Mahmoud Awwad, reportedly died in 2013, several months after he was shot and injured during clashes with Israeli troops inside the refugee camp, according to the Maan News Agency.

The shootings, which came a day after a 16-year-old girl was shot dead in the occupied West Bank after being deliberately run over by a settler, will fuel accusations of Israeli excessive force. The Palestinian government has said Israel is carrying out unlawful killings of Palestinians and “accusing every victim of holding a knife” or planting one at the side of alleged attackers.

A 27-year-old Israeli security guard was also taken to hospital with an injury to his hand, apparently from shrapnel caused by the gunshots.

“An officer who observed the event approached, fired accurately and neutralised the terrorists,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

The attack was the latest in a wave of violence since October 1 that has killed more than 90 Palestinians. Over half of the Palestinians killed have been alleged attackers, while others were shot during demonstrations and clashes with Israeli security forces, including along the Gaza border. Some 16 Israelis, an American and an Eritrean, have also died.

It was the first attack in Jerusalem in nearly two weeks after the majority of attacks targeting Israelis had shifted to the southern West Bank.

At a petrol station in the West Bank yesterday, on the side of a road regularly used by Israelis to drive between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, a Palestinian stabbed two Israeli soldiers, killing one of them, before he was shot dead.

A 16-year-old Palestinian was also shot dead on Monday near the West Bank city of Nablus after approaching soldiers with a knife, the military said.

Also on Monday, the Israeli army prohibited Palestinians from entering 24 illegal Jewish settlements after an Israeli woman was stabbed to death at a road junction in the area on Sunday. The restrictions included the towns of Efrat and Beitar Ilit, where an estimated 2,000 Palestinians work.

Palestinians were being allowed to travel on the area’s roads but not enter the settlements, which are gated and guarded, a military spokeswoman said, without being able to say how long the measure would be in place.

The Etzion junction, where 21-year-old Hadar Buchris was killed on Sunday, also saw a shooting on Thursday in which an American, an Israeli and a Palestinian were killed.

There have also been other stabbings and attempted attacks against civilians and security personnel in Gush Etzion, which lies between Jerusalem and the Hebron, a focal point of the recent violence.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered additional security measures in Hebron to halt what he has called “terrorism by individuals, occasionally with kitchen knives, who are incited mainly by social media.”

The army detained 15 suspects in overnight raids in and around Hebron, Palestinian security sources said.

Troops have set up additional checkpoints around the city where some 500 Jewish settlers live under tight guard among around 200,000 Palestinians, a constant source of tension.

The bloodshed has been driven in part by Muslim agitation over stepped-up Jewish visits to East Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque compound as well as by long-deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

*Agencies