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JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Clashes broke out in East Jerusalem late Sunday after news of the death of a Palestinian teenager who died from injuries sustained when he was shot last week by Israeli border police, his family and a hospital said.

Police said Palestinians threw stones and firecrackers at officers in Wadi Joz and the Issawiya and al-Tur districts of East Jerusalem and stoned civilian traffic.

They also threw petrol bombs at a petrol station on the edge of the East Jerusalem Israeli settlement of French Hill, setting a pump on fire.

Police said they responded to the unrest with unspecified "riot dispersal" weapons.

No serious injuries were reported on either side.

Muhammad Abd al-Majid Sunuqrut was shot last Monday by Israeli forces as he was talking on the phone in Wadi al-Joz in what his father at the time told Ma'an was an "unprovoked attack."

Police said Sunuqrut was shot in the leg with a sponge grenade -- intended to be a non-lethal form of crowd control -- while rioting, but his family said he was shot in the head on his way to the mosque.

"There were no clashes in the area, he went for night prayers at the mosque and was bringing bread back home," his uncle Muhtadi Sunuqrut told AFP.

"Whatever they call the bullet -- it caused Mohammed's death, it broke his skull and caused internal bleeding," he said.

"This is an assassination."

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP the border police had identified Sunuqrut as being "involved in rioting" and he was "shot in the leg" with the projectile, which has a foam-rubber nose atop a high-density plastic body and is fired from a grenade launcher.

Despite being hit, Sunuqrut attempted to flee but he "fell and then was transferred to Maqased hospital," Rosenfeld said.

Rosenfeld said the teen must have hit his head when he fell. He said the justice ministry's internal affairs unit was looking into the incident, in what he described as "standard procedure" for such cases.

After initial treatment in Maqased hospital in East Jerusalem, he was transferred to Hadassah Ein Kerem in west Jerusalem where he was pronounced dead on Sunday.

A hospital spokeswoman told AFP his body was being transferred to the Abu Kabir forensic institute in Tel Aviv for an autopsy.

But Sami Sunuqrut, another uncle of the teenager, said the family do not want a post-mortem.

"We don't want an autopsy, we know why he was killed," he told AFP, saying police had shot him "point blank" at a time when there were no clashes in the area.

Israeli forces blocked a main road in al-Issawiya with piles of dirt and rocks following the clashes.

Over 770 Palestinians have been detained in East Jerusalem following widespread demonstrations in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shufat after the murder of teenager Muhammad Abu Khdeir on July 2.

Ma'an staff contributed to this report

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Gas station in French Hill, Jerusalem that was damaged by fire bombs, September 7, 2014. Photo by Emil Salman

Autopsy carried out on Palestinian teen whose death sparked rioting in E. Jerusalem
Police brace for resumption of unrest that broke out after Muhammad Abd al-Majid Sunuqrut died of wounds sustained in clash with police last week.

The autopsy of a Palestinian teenager who died on Sunday of injuries sustained in clashes with police a week earlier in East Jerusalem was carried out in Tel Aviv Monday afternoon. The funeral was scheduled for 5 P.M. Police in the capital were bracing for a resumption of the violence that broke out in Palestinian neighborhoods in the city after the death of Muhammad Abd al-Majid Sunuqrut, 16, was announced on Sunday.

Police say that on August 31, Sunuqrut was throwing rocks during protests in the Wadi Joz neighborhood when an officer shot him in the leg with a foam-tipped bullet. They say he fell and hit his head, sustaining critical head injuries. But Sunuqrut’s family say police shot him in the head at close range with a rubber-tipped bullet. The family’s demand that a Palestinian pathologist of their choosing participate in the autopsy was granted. The autopsy was carried out at the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine in south Tel Aviv.

On Sunday there was rioting in a number of East Jerusalem neighborhoods after Sunuqrut’s death was reported. Jerusalem emergency services said two firebombs were thrown at pumps at a gas station in the French Hill neighborhood, and that rioters broke into a nearby convenience store, causing heavy damage.

A police spokesman said a man was lightly wounded in the A-Tur neighborhood after rocks were thrown at his vehicle and that teens threw rocks in the Isawiyah neighborhood.

Police closed the road between Isawiyah and French Hill, the main route into Isawiyah, as well as the road from the neighborhood to Mount Scopus was also closed, leaving only one road in and out of Isawiyah.

“Nearly 18,000 people live here, that’s collective punishment,” Isawiyah resident Mohammed Abu Houmous said, adding, “Half the children didn’t go to school today because of it.”

Eli Rosenfeld, the chairman of the French Hill Community Administration, called the unrest “a strategic escalation.”

“This is no terror cell of two or three terrorists who sneak in and throw a firebomb. It’s 40 to 50 people who went into the gas station and wreaked havoc in the neighborhood. There is no more warning. They could just as easily have continued on to the school. Block the road first of all, and make sure there is a constant presence of security troops. A police station needs to be positioned here, and at the same time [the state] must continue to invest in Isawiyah,” Rosenfeld said, adding, “Feelings are very hard now in French Hill. If they’re making the leap from coexistence to extremism here, that’s very frightening.”


By Nir Hasson for Haaretz
| Sep. 8, 2014 | 6:16 PM