Fulla Rasmi Abdelazeez Masalmeh, 15, was shot and killed by the Israeli army while in a vehicle near the town of Ramallah.
Ramallah, occupied West Bank – The Israeli army has shot dead a 15-year-old Palestinian girl in the town of Beitunia near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian health ministry identified the victims as 15-year-old Fulla Rasmi Abdelazeez Masalmeh. “She was due to turn 16 on her birthday tomorrow. She was killed when occupation soldiers fired at her during a raid on Beitunia,” it said in a statement on Monday.
Palestinian officials initially wrongly identified the victim as a 19-year-old woman named Sanaa al-Tal.
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, another Palestinian, 26-year-old Anas Hassouneh, was injured and arrested in the shooting.
Masalmeh, who was shot while she was in a car, hails from the town of al-Thahiriyeh south of Hebron city in the southern occupied West Bank.
News and images of the incident were circulated by local media at 4am (01:00 GMT), and her killing was confirmed several hours later.
A witness told Wafa, that Masalmeh and Hassouneh were in a vehicle driving up a road, unaware that Israeli forces had stationed themselves at several points until they were surprised by the army’s presence.
“When they tried to turn around, they found other soldiers opposite them who started shooting at them without any notice,” the witness, who lives in the area, said, adding that the car was shot at three times by soldiers stationed on different corners as it tried to get away.
The witness added that Israeli soldiers pulled Hassouneh, who was driving the car, out of the vehicle and that he was bleeding, while Masalmeh died at the scene.
An Israeli army statement said soldiers spotted a “suspicious vehicle accelerating towards them during an operation by security forces”, according to Israeli media. The forces signalled for the vehicle to stop, but it accelerated towards them, after which they fired at the vehicle, the statement said.
