Award-winning photographer shot by Israel soldier in the West Bank

An internationally-acclaimed, award-winning photographer was shot by an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, reports the Art Newspaper.

Tanya Habjouqa, who won the 2014 World Press photo award, was struck in the leg by a rubber-coated metal bullet fired by Israeli occupation forces during a protest near Bet El checkpoint.

Habjouqa told the paper that she was some 40 metres from Palestinian protesters “when Israeli soldiers in the distance started shooting rubber bullets and tear gas in several directions”.

“She also saw soldiers aim at a Palestinian gas station where there were no protesters, just people filling up their gas tanks,” the report added.

“I was on the side with my camera at the beginning of the protest with cameras around my neck, so I feel I was definitely targeted though thankfully they chose not to aim for my head,” Habjouqa tells us. “It hurts like hell and the bruise is spreading front and back.”

Read: Media freedom watchdog warns of more Israel attacks on journalists in Gaza

Habjouqa is a founder of Rawiya, the first all-female photo collective in the Middle East, as well as a member of the Noor Photography collective, a Magnum Foundation grantee, and the author of the photo book Occupied Pleasures that the Smithsonian named one of the best photo books of 2015.

Her work is in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Institut du Monde Art in Paris.