The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the victims as 15-year-old Fulla Rasmi Abdelazeez Masalmeh. “She was supposed to be 16 on her birthday tomorrow. She was killed when occupation soldiers fired on her during a raid in Beitunia,” it said in a statement on Monday. Palestinian officials initially misidentified 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 wounded and arrested in the shooting. Masalmeh, who was shot while in a car, is from the town of al-Thahiriyeh south of the city of Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank. News and images of the incident were released by local media at 04:00 (01:00 GMT) and her murder was confirmed several hours later. A witness told Wafa that Masalmeh and Hassouneh were in a vehicle driving down a road, unaware that Israeli forces were positioned in several locations until they were surprised by the army’s presence. “When they tried to turn around, they found opposite the other soldiers who started shooting at them without any warning,” said the witness, who lives in the area, adding that the car was shot three times by soldiers who were at different angles. as he tried to escape. The witness added that Israeli soldiers pulled Hassouneh, who was driving the car, from the vehicle and that he was bleeding, while Masalmeh died at the scene. An Israeli military statement said soldiers spotted a “suspicious vehicle speeding towards them during a security forces operation,” according to Israeli media. The forces signaled the vehicle to stop, but it sped towards them and then fired at the vehicle, the statement said. Surveillance video widely shared on social media appeared to show the car slowly driving up to the area before being shot by soldiers nearby. Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the video. Video| Press coverage: “As occupation forces fired at a vehicle and injured its occupants, during the incursion into Beituniya, west of Ramallah, early today.” pic.twitter.com/q5w992j7Oh — Quds News Network (@qudsn) November 14, 2022 [Translation: “Media coverage video: The moment occupation forces fired at a vehicle and injured its occupants, during a raid on Beitunia, west of Ramallah, at dawn today.”] Diaa Kurt, the head of the Beituniya municipality, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army entered the town, located west of Ramallah, to carry out arrests, during which clashes broke out. “These young men were in the car … The military was suspicious of the car and then they shot at the car,” Kurt said. “Killing in the blink of an eye is a crime.” The Israeli army, Qurt said, handed over the girl’s body to Palestinian doctors, who took it to the public hospital in Ramallah. He noted that the army arrested three Palestinian men from Beitunia on Sunday night. “As an occupied Palestinian people, the Israeli army has the power to shoot and kill our youth even if they only throw stones during clashes. They also shoot bystanders or people in their cars,” he said. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on Monday for “international measures to force the occupying state to stop its aggression against our people” in response to the killing. He said that “the last victim of this attack was the girl who was martyred this morning in Beitunia.” Israeli forces are conducting raids and arrests across the occupied West Bank on an almost daily basis as part of an effort to crack down on armed groups operating in Palestinian territory. The military routinely fires live ammunition during such raids, often resulting in the killing or injury of residents, including uninvolved individuals. So far in 2022, the Israeli military has killed 197 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip, including 43 children. According to the United Nations, the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank this year is the highest in 16 years. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has noted in previous reports that Israeli forces “often use firearms against Palestinians on suspicion or as a preventive measure, in violation of international standards.”
