Two Palestinians killed after checkpoint knife attack bid
Israelis say woman, man ignored orders to halt
JERUSALEM, April 27, (Agencies): Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian woman and her teenage brother on Wednesday, saying they were armed with knives and tried to carry out an attack at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.
In the last half year, Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two visiting US citizens. Israeli forces have killed at least 193 Palestinians, 130 of whom Israel says were assailants. Many others were shot dead in clashes and protests.
Police said the woman, holding a knife, and a man walked rapidly towards police and other Israeli security guards in a vehicles-only lane at the Qalandia checkpoint outside Jerusalem.
“Police called on them several times to stop. When they kept advancing ... the officers neutralised the terrorists,” a police statement said.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the two dead as Maram Abu Ismail 23, and her 16-year-old brother, Ibrahim Taha.
Police, who have been on high alert during the current Jewish Passover holiday week, issued a photograph of three knives on the ground which they said the two had been carrying. Alaa Soboh, a Palestinian bus driver who said he witnessed the incident, told Reuters the pair appeared to be unfamiliar with crossing procedures and were swiftly challenged at the checkpoint.
“As soon as the two crossed, (Israeli forces) started screaming ‘Go back, go back’, and then they began shooting. The first one they shot was the girl ... the boy tried to go backward, when they fired seven bullets at him,” Soboh said.
Factors behind the bloodshed that began in October include Palestinian bitterness over stalled statehood negotiations and the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, stepped up Jewish access to a disputed Jerusalem shrine, and Islamist-led calls for Israel’s destruction. The pace of what had been near-daily Palestinian stabbing, shootings and car-ramming attacks has slowed, although a suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus that wounded 15 people on April 18 has fuelled Israeli security concerns.
Israel attributes the fall-off in incidents partly to tighter cooperation with Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and more stringent monitoring of social media to identify potential assailants.
“Officers and border policemen at the Qalandia checkpoint saw male and female (Palestinians) walking towards the passage for cars only, with the woman’s hand concealed in a purse and the man’s hand behind his back holding something,” spokeswoman Luba Samri said.
“Police ordered them to stop a number of times without success.
“The female terrorist stopped a short distance from the officers, then walked the other way with the man, when she suddenly turned around to face the officers again, pulled a knife that was in her purse and threw it at an officer near her,” she said.
A second knife identical to the woman’s was found in the man’s belt, she said, in addition to a butterfly knife. No Israelis were wounded. The man was not immediately identified.
Alaa, a witness who works near the checkpoint, told AFP “policemen shouted at them to go back and they seemed not to know what to do any more”.
“They shot the girl first and then the man looked like he didn’t know what to do, he tried to go back but they shot him too.”
Following the shootings, soldiers threw tear-gas canisters to disperse the crowds at the heavily fortified checkpoint on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem.