JERUSALEM: An Israeli officer shot dead a masked Palestinian motorist early Sunday as he tried to run down a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank set up to apprehend thieves, police said.
Two accomplices fled the car, which contained stolen goods and equipment used to carry out burglaries, a statement said.
Police had received information regarding a “suspicious car” and set up a checkpoint in the Jordan Valley.
While examining a vehicle there, another car overtook it and accelerated toward an officer who beckoned it to stop.
“When the car did not heed the officer’s orders to stop, the officer shot at the car,” police said in a statement.
“As a result of the gunfire, the car stopped and its Palestinian motorist, a resident of one of the villages nearby, was hit and pronounced dead.”
There have been sporadic nationalistically motivated Palestinian attacks, including car-ramming attacks, against Israeli civilians and security forces in the West Bank.
But in Sunday’s statement the police refrained from calling the Palestinian as a “terrorist,” identifying instead only as a motorist.