Zionist shooting of Palestinian girl 'extrajudicial execution': Amnesty

(MENAFN- Arab News) JERUSALEM: Rights group Amnesty International has described this week's shooting death of a young Palestinian woman at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank as an 'extrajudicial execution.'

Israel had on Thursday defended the actions of its soldiers who shot dead the 18-year-old as questions swirled over events leading to the killing.
Hadeel Al-Hashlamon was shot on Tuesday at a checkpoint in the flashpoint city of Hebron. The military said she was attempting to stab a soldier when they opened fire.
'Evidence obtained by Amnesty International indicates that the killing... was an extrajudicial execution' the group said.
'Pictures of the stand-off that led to her death and accounts by eyewitnesses interviewed by Amnesty International show that she at no time posed a sufficient threat to the soldiers to make their use of deliberate lethal force permissible' it said.
'This killing is the latest in a long line of unlawful killings carried out by the Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank with near total impunity.'
An activist with the Palestinian group Youth Against Settlements that distributed photos purporting to show the woman at the checkpoint before her death said he arrived at the scene shortly afterwards.
'She did not have a knife' said the activist Issa Amro. 'She was murdered in cold blood and was not a threat to the soldiers.'
Israeli rights group B'Tselem on Thursday denounced what it called the 'disproportionate reaction' of the soldiers saying they were too quick resorting to live fire.
An Israeli army officer said: 'She approached one of the troops while pulling a knife out of her bag while the soldiers fired at the ground then at her legs. In spite of this she continued walking. The troops then fired at her lower body.'
The rights group disputed the Israeli's military's version of events saying it 'is contradicted by statements made by the two eyewitnesses interviewed by Amnesty International.'