Israelis fatally shoot alleged Palestinian attacker

Israelis fatally shoot alleged Palestinian attacker
A driver from Jerusalem was shot after allegedly attempting to run over a border guard.
2 min read
26 November, 2020
The alleged attacker was from Jerusalem [Getty]

Israeli security forces fatally shot a Palestinian at a checkpoint outside Jerusalem on Wednesday after he allegedly tried to run down a border policeman, the Israeli police said.

The driver, from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, tried to flee an inspection at the checkpoint, hitting and lightly injuring the officer, the police said in a statement.

"The policeman and security personnel fired at the vehicle," it said, wounding the driver who was taken to a Jerusalem hospital.

"After attempts to save him, he was pronounced dead," Hadassah hospital said in a Whatsapp message.

The police did not immediately characterise the incident - at the Al-Zaim checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, just east of Jerusalem - as a terrorist attack.

The statement said army personnel checking the driver's documents became suspicious that they were forged and during the inspection the suspect drove off at speed, hitting the policeman.

The Hadassah statement said he arrived at the hospital's trauma unit "with no pulse and a severe stomach wound".

In June, Ahmad Erakat, nephew of Saeb Erakat the veteran Palestinian negotiator who died of coronavirus this month, was shot dead at a West Bank checkpoint after Israeli police said he drove his car at speed toward a policewoman.

His uncle said at the time that Ahmad, 27, was "executed".

He dismissed the police allegation of an attempted car ramming as "impossible", saying that Ahmad had been due to be married later in the week.

The previous month, a Palestinian man was killed in similar circumstances near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

He was shot dead on May 29 after trying to ram a car into Israeli soldiers, none of whom were injured, police said at the time.

Israeli forces, who have occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day war, are regularly targeted in the Palestinian territory.

From October 2015 Israel and the West Bank saw a wave of "lone-wolf" attacks on Israelis by predominantly young, knife-wielding Palestinians.

Car-ramming attacks were also used, and more rarely, firearms. The attacks have become less frequent but have not stopped altogether.

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