Description

Image by Arabs48
_____

JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man in the al-Tur neighborhood on the Mount of Olives east of the Old City of Jerusalem on Wednesday after he allegedly attempted to run over border guard officers with his vehicle.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma'an that the man tried to run over two border police officers with his car, leaving them moderately injured.

Witnesses told Ma'an that Israeli officers then opened fire at a young man in a grey Land Cruiser at the main crossroads of al-Tur, critically injuring him.

Israeli forces sealed the area, preventing locals from accessing the injured man to give him first aid. The man succumbed to his wounds shortly after he was shot.

The forces reportedly fired stun grenades at those who attempted to access the man after he was shot, head of a local follow-up committee of al-Tur, Mufid Abu Ghannam, told Ma'an.

Locals identified him as Omran Omar Abu Dheim, 41, from the Jabal al-Mukabbir neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem.

An eyewitness denied the Israeli claims that the driver was trying to run over Israeli border police officers.

"He was trying to make a U-turn in the middle of the road," the witness claimed.

Targeting witnesses

Israeli forces later raided several commercial stores in al-Tur, confiscating surveillance cameras which held footage of the shooting of Abu Dheim by Israeli forces.

Al-Tur committee head Abu Ghannam told Ma'an that Israeli forces, intelligence officers, and undercover officers were deployed in the neighborhood after the shooting and raided all shops near the scene of the crime.

The officers confiscated all surveillance cameras "which documented the killing of Abu Dheim," Abu Ghannam added.

Abu Dheim's vehicle was also confiscated.

Palestinian shop owners have been targeted by Israeli forces in the past when private shop surveillance cameras capture incidents involving Israeli forces.

The Israeli military ordered shop owner Fakher Zayed to dismantle his surveillance cameras after capturing footage of Israeli forces shooting and killing two Palestinian teenagers during a demonstration in May 2014.

Zayed was interrogated, threatened and ordered to remove his security cameras in 24 hours, and had his ID withheld, Human Rights Watch reported at the time.

Abu Dheim's death and alleged attack are currently under investigation, Israeli sources said.