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Israel closes case against guards killing Palestinians in West Bank

Xinhua, October 26, 2016 Adjust font size:

Jerusalem District Attorney's Office closed Wednesday the case against security guards who shot and killed a sister and a brother at the Kalandia checkpoint in the West Bank in April.

A statement by the District Attorney said there was not enough evidence to press charges against one of the guards and the other was found not to be guilty of any wrongdoing.

The shooting claimed the lives of 16-year-old Ibrahim Taha from Beit Surik, a village east of Jerusalem, and his sister, Maram Abu Ismail, a 23-year-old woman from the neighborhood of A-Ram in East Jerusalem. She was pregnant at the time of her death, and a mother of two daughters.

Shortly after the incident, the police released a statement saying Border Police forces shot the siblings after they walked towards the checkpoint armed with knives.

Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reported that a video footage from a security camera shows that only Abu Ismail pulled out a knife and then threw it on the ground. Her brother did not draw any weapons and even tried to pull Abu Ismail back.

The police refused to release the footage.

The daily also cited officials with the investigation who said that the siblings were shot from a distance of 20 meters (about 66 feet) and posed no threats to the forces.

The District Attorney confirmed that the footage that Ibrahim Taha was seen in footage trying to stop his sister but said that the guards "possibly" have not seen it from the point in which they were standing.

The incident came amidst a yearlong violence, which has claimed the lives of at least 230 Palestinians and 34 Israelis since September 2015. Israel says that most of the Palestinians were killed for perpetrating or attempting to carry out stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks.

The Palestinians and human rights organizations say that Israel is using excessive forces to quell the uprising, and in many cases, kill Palestinians who could be stopped without using lethal force or were mistaken to be attackers.

Israeli leaders accuse the Palestinian National Authority of "inciting" the unrest, while the Palestinians say it is the result of 49 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, home to more than five million Palestinians, where they wish to establish their state. Endit