Israeli soldiers have shot dead a Palestinian motorist who they said tried to ram them at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank – an account disputed by his wife who was with him in the car.
The Palestinian health ministry said the man, identified as 42-year-old Osama Mansour, was killed on Tuesday and his wife sustained bullet fragment wounds. The military statement said no troops were hurt in the early morning incident
“They told us to stop the car and we stopped and turned it off,” the man’s wife, Sumaya Mansour, 35, told Palestine TV.
“Then they looked at us and told us to go, we turned the car on and moved and all of them started shooting at us.”
Salem Eid, the mayor of Biddu village where the man lived, said the Palestinians may raise the incident at the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor announced last month it would formally investigate alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories.
In a statement, the Israeli military said the vehicle accelerated towards a group of soldiers “in a way that endangered their lives”, and they responded with gunfire “to thwart the threat”.
