17-year-old Bayan al-Esseili shot dead after alleged attack in Hebron

A Palestinian teen was shot dead Saturday by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron after allegedly stabbing an Israeli border police officer in the third alleged attack of the day.

Palestinian locals said that Israeli forces opened fire at the woman close to the the Wadi al-Ghrus area near the illegal Kiryat Arba settlement.

The teen was identified as 17-year-old Bayan Ayman Abd al-Hadi al-Esseili.

Her family told Ma’an new agency they were informed by Israeli authorities that their daughter had been killed after she stabbed a soldier.

A border police woman sustained light injuries to her hand, according to Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld, who reported that a “female terrorist was shot at the scene.”

She is the third Palestinian to be killed so far today. Fadil Qawasmi, 18, was shot dead by an Israeli settler earlier Saturday morning on Shuhada Street in Hebron’s Old City, hours before a 16-year-old Muataz Uweisat was shot dead in occupied East Jerusalem.

Both teens were shot dead for carrying out alleged attacks. No Israelis were injured in either incident.

As Palestinians may only access Shuhada Street by passing through an Israeli military checkpoint with a metal detector, suspicions are being raised as to whether Qawasmi could have been carrying a knife at the time of the alleged attack.

Local Palestinians are prevented from accessing the street in order to “secure” the area for around 600 Jewish settlers who have taken over homes and evicted residents in the area. The few Palestinian residents left living in the area must access homes from the back.

A group of prominent Israeli human rights organisations on Wednesday released a statement arguing that recent calls by Israeli politicians to shoot Palestinian attackers rather than arrest them effectively endorses the killing of Palestinians.

The statement adds that “in instances when Jews have been suspected of attacks, none of the suspects has been shot.”

“Politicians and senior police officers have not only failed to act to calm the public climate of incitement, but on the contrary have openly called for the extrajudicial killing of [Palestinian] suspects,” the groups said.

The PLO secretary-general Saeb Erekat announced last week that the Palestinian leadership would be contacting the High Commissioner for Human Rights in order to ask the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Chrystof Heyns, to conduct an investigation into the recent killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces.