An Israeli border guard today killed a Palestinian who tried to grab his gun when detained while trying to cross into east Jerusalem from the West Bank, a police official said.
The man was apprehended along with a group of Palestinians before he was shot and killed by the border guard, the police source said on condition of anonymity. His neighbours later identified him as Ezzedine Kawasba, 38, a father of five from a small village outside the West Bank town of Hebron. They said he was a labourer who worked in Israel illegally.
The B’tselem human rights group, which sent a field representative to the scene, quoted a witness as saying there was no scuffle.
Thousands of Palestinians cross into Israel each day from the West Bank in search of work despite Israel's separation barrier, a network of walls and fences that snakes across the territory and through annexed east Jerusalem. On September 22, clashes erupted in Jerusalem after a Jewish settlement guard shot dead a Palestinian during a confrontation in a tense neighbourhood in the annexed Arab eastern part of the city.
* Agencies