Israeli police kill Palestinian woman over alleged stabbing attempt

Israeli forces on Wednesday shot dead a Palestinian woman claiming she attempted to stab police with scissors at the entrance to Jerusalem's Old City.

The Palestinian health ministry identified the dead woman as Siham Rateb Nimr, 49, from the Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem.

The official Palestinian news agency said Nimr was the mother of Mustafa Nimr, a 27-year-old shot dead by Israeli police in September.

Police had initially claimed he was an attacker, but later admitted that was untrue and that he and his cousin Ali had merely tried to evade a police spot check near Shuafat while driving.

Ali was later charged with manslaughter, with prosecutors saying his erratic driving made officers shoot.

Israeli police on Wednesday claimed Siham pulled a pair of scissors on the security force members at the entrance to Damascus Gate and was shot dead before she was able to stab anyone.

However, eyewitnesses denied she had attempted to attack police officers, adding that she had gotten into an argument with an officer, which led to police opening fire.

Siham’s brother-in-law corroborated the eyewitness account, telling The New Arab that she got into an argument with a police officer at the scene.

“We don’t know the reason for the argument, but their [the police] bullets were faster than anything else,” said the brother-in-law.

“Could they have arrested her or was she that much of a threat? Even if she was carrying scissors and waving them around, couldn’t they have arrested her instead of killing her?”

Meanwhile, Siham’s daughter who was with her at the time of her killing, remains in Israeli custody.

A wave of violence that broke out in October 2015 has claimed the lives of 258 Palestinians, 40 Israelis, two Americans, one Jordanian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese national.

Human rights groups have accused Israeli security forces of using excessive force to subdue attackers in certain cases, most of which have been carried out by lone-wolf assailants, many of them young.

Reviews by the army of two fatal shootings of attackers in October found that the use of deadly force could have been avoided.