Emergency services in Israel said that Israeli police mistakenly killed a Palestinian girl after shooting at a car suspected of being involved in a ramming attack.
Border police said they shot and killed the girl, said to be three or four years old, after shooting at a couple in the car, who, they said, had collided with two cars. Israeli Officers at a checkpoint in the West Bank.
The unidentified girl was in a truck in front of the car that collided with the crossing near the Palestinian village of Biddu, northwest of Jerusalem, on Sunday evening.
The last war between Israel and Hamas
Video footage from a security camera showed a white car running over two Israeli policemen at the checkpoint.
The police then chased the car and opened fire.
Police said the attackers beat a man and a woman inside the car, in addition to the girl who was in the car in front of her.
Israeli paramedics said she was three years old, but Palestinian sources told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa that she was four years old.
Israeli ambulance services said she was treated at the scene, but Israeli doctors declared her dead, without mentioning the cause of death.
Paramedics said a female paramilitary border police officer also suffered minor injuries.
A member of the Israeli security forces at the scene
The West Bank checkpoint where the girl was killed. Photo: AP
The Israeli police said in a statement that a car carrying a man and a woman stopped at a crossing near Jerusalem and carried out a ramming attack against the border police, who responded with live ammunition.
Police said the suspected attackers had been “neutralized” without providing details.
Palestinian sources told WAFA that the couple were also martyred in the shooting.
“The situation is dire” elsewhere in the West Bank after the clashes
Earlier, the Israeli army said that one of its helicopters attacked Palestinians who were throwing explosives at Israeli vehicles in Jenin, also in the West Bank.
Seven Palestinians were killed in the air strike, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Mujahid Nazzal, a doctor at a nearby clinic who rushed to the scene, said: “The situation was really tragic, and seven young men were lying on the ground.”
The violence erupted after a policeman was killed and three others were injured when a roadside bomb exploded near an Israeli security vehicle.
People inspect the site of an Israeli air strike in the West Bank city of Jenin. Photo: AP
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The funeral of a Palestinian who was martyred in the West Bank
Tensions have increased in the West Bank since Israel invaded Gaza.
The war there is approaching three months, and has claimed the lives of more than 22,800 people, more than two-thirds of whom are women and children, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. Their number does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
About 85% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people have been expelled from their homes and confined to small parts of the Strip. The Israeli blockade has caused a humanitarian crisis, with a quarter of the population starving due to insufficient supplies entering the region, according to the United Nations.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after its October 7 attack, in which the militants killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 240 others.
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Gaza may remain under Israeli “security control.”
Netanyahu's aide hopes the war has reached the “beginning of the end”
Israeli forces have finished dismantling Hamas in northern Gaza, Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Sky News on Sunday.
Regev suggested that this “success” could mean “the beginning of the end” of the war.
He said that any reconstruction process and the return of Palestinians to the region “must wait until the end of combat operations.”
But he said there was hope that Palestinians would be able to return to their homes “in the not too distant future.”
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Mark Regev hopes that the war is coming to an end
The advisor also said he agreed with Antony Blinken – US Secretary of State – who had previously said there were too many civilian deaths in Gaza.
“We did not want to see a single civilian killed, and we tried to make every effort to avoid civilian deaths,” Regev told Sky News.
He claimed that the number of civilians caught in the crossfire was “declining.”
Asked whether there was any disagreement between Israel and the United States over post-conflict security, after Blinken said Washington “has a vision” for Gaza’s future, Regev said the two countries agreed on the “comprehensive strategy” to ensure Hamas’ survival. “Destroyed.”
“There can be no answers to what comes next,” he added.
“We would like to see a government of the Palestinians, for the Palestinians… that insists on disarmament in the Gaza Strip and the eradication of extremism.”
