Palestinian Killed in East Jerusalem Refugee Camp After Suspected Attempt to Run Over Police

Four other Palestinian men wounded in Shoafat and in separate confrontations in the West Bank.

Sep 5, 2016

Confrontations at Shoafat Refugee Camp in 2015.Credit: Reuters

Sep 5, 2016

A Palestinian man was shot and killed and another was wounded early on Monday after a suspected attempt to run over policemen in East Jerusalem's Shoafat refugee camp, police said.

Police said the men drove quickly toward the officers, refused to stop and were shot. There were no police injuries.

"At the end of an operational activity conducted by Israel Police and Border Police in the Shoafat reugee camp, and after the forces withdrew, a vehicle approached them traveling swiftly in an attempt to run over the forces," a statement from police in Jerusalem said.

"When the suspects failed to heed their orders and continued driving quickly towards them, with suspected intent to run them over, gunfire was aimed in their direction. As a result one of them was seriously wounded and died and the other was moderately wounded," the statement said.

Shoafat residents identified the slain man as Mustafa Nimr, in his 20s, and the wounded man as a relative named Ali Nimr.

Palestinian witnesses said a Border Police force had entered the camp in the morning for a search and arrest raid, and encountered the vehicle with the two young men inside.

The witnesses rejected what the police said about an attempt to run them over and said the gunfire was unjustified.

Palestinians reported three more people were wounded by gunfire in confrontations in the West Bank town of Sebastia and Balata Refugee Camp near Nablus.

Witnesses said IDF forces entered the camp and confrontations ensued with dozens of youths. In Sebastia two young men were wounded and another was wounded in Balata and treated at a hospital in Nablus.

Last week a Palestinian of 18 was arrested at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron with a knife, and an investigation found he had intended to stab Israelis there to avenge the death of an uncle shot during a stabbing attack of half a year ago.

A day earlier soldiers shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian man near the settlement of Ofra. An investigation found that the man, Iyad Zacharia Hamed, 38, made no attempt to attack the soldiers. The soldier who shot him has been questioned on suspicion of causing death by negligence.