HEBRON, West Bank (AP) – Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 73-year-old Palestinian woman at a West Bank gas station on Friday in what the Israeli military alleged was an attempt to attack them with her car.
The military said the car slowed down and then sped toward the soldiers. It said troops jumped out of the way unharmed and opened fire. A photo later showed nine bullet holes in the car’s back windshield.
The army said the woman was wounded, while her family and the Palestinian health ministry said she was killed.
The woman was identified by her family as Tharwat Sharawi, of the West Bank city of Hebron. Her son Ayoub, 52, denied his mother, who started driving in her 50s, intended to harm anyone. He said she had been on her way to her sister’s house for lunch when she was killed.
Sharawi, a mother of seven, was widowed in 1988 when her husband died from what Ayoub Sharawi said was tear gas fired by Israeli troops near a mosque. “If she had wanted to take revenge (for her husband’s death), she could have done that a long time ago,” Sharawi said. “There is no way she wanted to run over soldiers.”