Troops kill 95-year-old Palestinian woman at car checkpoint

ISRAELI troops killed a 95-year-old woman yesterday when they shot at a car that was driving down a West Bank road closed to Palestinians, a survivor said.

Palestinians Fattier Mohammed Hassan, 95, and another woman, Kifaya Ra’fat, 41, were in the back seat of a car as it reached a checkpoint on the outskirts of Ramallah.

“The soldiers were running towards us, shooting in all directions. They started to hit the windows of the car (with their weapons),” Ms Ra’fat said from her hospital bed.

After breaking the windows the soldiers retreated then began shooting at the vehicle from a distance, and she was shot in the thigh and Ms Hassan was killed, she said.

Mohammed Wahdan, a doctor at Ramallah’s hospital, confirmed Ms Hassan “was killed after being shot by one bullet in the back”.

An Israeli military source said a Palestinian car was moving fast on a road closed to Palestinians and soldiers fired warning shots into the air. When the car didn’t stop, the soldiers fired at the wheels of the car, the source said.

Patricia Smith from the Palestine Monitor, which tracks Palestinian casualties, said Ms Hassan is the oldest Palestinian to be killed in the violence which began in September 2000.