AFP
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Israeli forces killed a Palestinian near Jerusalem, Israeli police and family members said yesterday.
The police said Anas al-Atrash, 23, was shot dead when he ran at an officer with a knife at a checkpoint between the West Bank and the suburbs of East Jerusalem on Thursday night, in the second such fatality in 12 hours.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Atrash was shot at the Wadi Nara checkpoint around midnight, when he ran at a border policeman with a knife, prompting the officer to open fire.
“A Palestinian who arrived at the area ran out of a vehicle toward border police who were there on patrol,” Rosenfeld said.
“The Palestinian had a knife in his hand and a border police officer responded by firing shots at the suspect who was injured seriously and pronounced dead a short while after.”
The fatality’s father Fuad al-Atrash told AFP that border police “stopped my two sons at the checkpoint and they were waiting to be checked. Then the soldiers came to the car and opened the door and my son tried to get out and they shot him.”
The brother was arrested, he added.
Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner said on Twitter that Atrash had published his “intent to join God” on his Facebook page a short while before his incident.
Atrash was buried in Hebron yesterday. An AFP correspondent said some 3,000 people participated in the funeral, following which there were minor clashes between youths and Israeli forces in Hebron.
A few hours before Atrash’s death, Israeli forces shot dead another Palestinian near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, saying he had fired a flare gun at Israelis at Tapuah Junction.
The body of the man, identified as Bashar Habaneen, 29, was handed over to Palestinians by the Israeli army yesterday morning.