A 13-year-old Palestinian girl has been shot in the leg at an Israeli checkpoint, in what appears to have been a suicide attempt.
“The girl approached a vehicle crossing by foot, holding a bag” the Defence Ministry said Wednesday, which aroused the suspicion of security guards that she might be carrying an explosive or a weapon.
They “ordered her to stop and even fired warning shots into the air”, but the girl ignored these warnings and continued walking forward. It was when the girl was only a few feet away from the guards that she put her hand in her shirt and they “shot her in the legs in order to stop her”.
After her possessions were checked by a sapper it turned out she had no weapons on her and it appears the girl was attempting suicide at the hands of the Israelis.
During an initial investigation of the incident the ministry reports that the teenager said, “I came to die”.
The girl has been identified by Palestinian sources as Bara’a Ramadan Owaisi of nearby Qalqilya. She was lightly injured and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
It also turns out that her aunt, Rasha Owaisi, 23, was shot dead at the same checkpoint last November after she brandished a knife and approached the guards there. The aunt had left a suicide note for her family.
Please pray for this girl. Let’s hope that she can get the help she needs to overcome her troubles and praise the Lord that the she wasn’t killed.