Israeli soldiers kill woman, 95, in taxi

RAMALLAH - Israeli soldiers have shot dead a 95-year-old Palestinian woman who was taking a taxi home after a medical check-up in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Palestinian witnesses and medics said troops opened fire on the van the woman was riding in when it tried to bypass rubble that Israeli forces had used to block the road between Ramallah and her home village of Atara.

Israeli military sources said soldiers shot at the tyres of a Palestinian vehicle travelling on a prohibited road north of Ramallah after the driver ignored orders to halt.

Israel's Channel Two television said a single soldier fired 17 bullets while he was running, making accurate aim difficult.

Medics said the woman, Fatima Hassan, who was on her way home from a medical clinic, was hit in the back by a bullet, and that two other women in the taxi were wounded.

Hassan was believed to be the oldest Palestinian killed since the start of an uprising for independence in September 2000.

Israel has reoccupied Ramallah and most other major West Bank cities, sealing off their main entrances, after a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in the Jewish state.

One of the passengers in the van, Kifaya Qadadha, 40, said troops fired without provocation.

"I was scared to death because there was so much shooting," she said from her hospital bed while being treated for a leg wound. Another passenger was critically hurt.

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said: "We condemn this war crime of killing in cold blood a 95-year-old woman and we hold Israel fully responsible."



On the diplomatic front, US ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer told a security conference near Tel Aviv that Jewish settlers living on occupied land did not represent a consensus in Israel.

"Today, settlers represent a particular point of view in Israel about the future of the occupied territories. They do not represent a national consensus."

The US envoy said that "Israel needs to make choices and define priorities," and repeated what he called Washington's long-standing opposition to "settlement activity".

Opinion polls have shown that, in return for peace with the Palestinians, a majority of Israelis would back the dismantling of some of the 145 settlements Israel has planted on territory seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: The Middle East