PA urges UN inquiry as Palestinians bury killed woman

Clashes as Palestinians deny claim that 19-year-old woman fatally shot by Israeli army had tried to stab a soldier.

Palestinian protest over woman''s death
Palestinians have urged the UN to provide them with international protection [Youth Against Settlements]

The Palestinian Authority has called for an international inquiry into the fatal shooting of a young Palestinian woman by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.

The PA foreign ministry called for the United Nations to carry out an investigation, while Palestinian Health Minister Jawad Awwad urged the UN to provide Palestinians with international protection, according to PA state media.

Israel delivered the body of 19-year-old Hadeel al-Hashlamon to her family late on Tuesday night. She was buried on Wednesday afternoon in her hometown.

Hundreds of Palestinian mourners attended her funeral, marching through the city and carrying banners calling for international protection.

The funeral was also attended by representatives of several major Palestinian political parties, including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and leftist factions. 

“People are very angry here,” Issa Amro, coordinator of the Hebron-based Youth Against Settlements activist group, told Al Jazeera. “Big clashes have been taking place throughout the day near the spot where she was killed.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera, the Israeli military spokeswoman said there were “small riots taking place and Palestinians are throwing stones” in Hebron. She declined to comment further.

Conflicting claims

The young woman was shot on Tuesday morning while passing through an Israeli army checkpoint in the centre of Hebron. She was subsequently transferred to an Israeli hospital for treatment, where she later died from her wounds.

The Israeli army accused al-Hashlamon of attempting to stab a soldier before she was shot in her “lower extremities” with live ammunition. It later emerged that she had been shot several times, including in her chest.


Read more: A lifetime of restrictions for Palestinians in Hebron


The local media organisation PalMedia released a video that showed al-Hashlamon’s body lying on the ground before she was roughly dragged out of the camera’s frame. Witnesses told local media that she had been left to bleed for half an hour before being taken away by an ambulance.

The incident came just hours after 21-year-old Dia al-Talahmeh died in the nearby village of Khursa shortly after Israeli forces arrived in the village to clear stones blocking the road. The army spokeswoman said he was killed when he “attempted to hurl an explosive device at the army vehicle and it detonated on himself”.

However, Palestinian security officials said he was shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

Hamas spokesman Mousheer al-Masri expressed support for any international efforts to “hold the [Israeli] occupation accountable”.

“The killing of the martyrs al-Hashlamon and al-Talahmeh are crimes by the Israeli occupation and it should have to pay for them,” al-Masri told Al Jazeera.

According to UN figures, at least 25 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army since the beginning of 2015. 


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