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Photo:
Scene in March, 2017. Published by Maan News
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BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- More than two months after being shot and critically injured by Israeli forces in an alleged car ramming attack, 16-year-old Fatima Jibrin Taqatqa succumbed to her wounds Saturday evening.

Taqatqa, from the town of Beit Fajjar in the southern occupied West Bank district of Bethlehem, drove a car into a group Israeli soldiers at a junction near the illegal Israeli settlement bloc of Gush Etzion on March 15, and Israeli soldiers immediately opened fire. No others were injured in the incident.

She was taken to Israel's Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, where she was treated for a critical head injury, and was eventually pronounced dead, Palestinian medical sources said Saturday.

Taqatqa became the 24th Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces or settlers since the start of 2017, and the fourth to be fatally shot while allegedly committing a vehicular attack. Seven Israelis were killed by Palestinians during the same time frame.

According to Ma'an estimates, 13 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed at the Gush Etzion junction since a wave of unrest first erupted across the occupied Palestinian territory in October 2015.

Israel has come under repeated criticism for using lethal force on Palestinians who posed no threat or could have been detained through nonlethal means, with the Palestinian leadership, rights groups, and the United Nations condemning Israeli forces of carrying out "extrajudicial executions."