Palestinian woman, 95, shot in taxi van by Israeli soldier
Laura King
Los Angeles Times
Dec. 4, 2002 12:00 AM

JERUSALEM - A 95-year-old Palestinian woman earned a grim distinction Tuesday, becoming the oldest known person to be killed in the violence that has raged between Israel and the Palestinians for the past 26 months.

The woman, Fatima Hassan, was shot to death by an Israeli soldier outside the West Bank town of Ramallah as she rode in a taxi van that was trying, in a maneuver commonplace in the Palestinian territories, to make its way around an Israeli checkpoint by using a back road.

The army said initially that troops had fired at the taxi's tires to try to halt its progress along the road, the use of which was forbidden to Palestinians.

Late Tuesday, Israel's Channel Two television station reported that the Israeli soldier who fired a volley of shots at the taxi was running toward it as he did so, making it very difficult for him to aim with accuracy, and in what would be an apparent breach of army regulations.

Army policy permits shooting in self-defense or at a defined target. The Channel Two report said at least 17 shots were fired at the moving vehicle.

In addition to Hassan, who suffered a fatal wound to the back, two other female passengers in the taxi were hurt, according to Palestinian medical officials.

The army said the incident was being investigated.

The army also said troops in the area had ample reason to be jittery. Only an hour earlier, it said, a Palestinian taxi had deliberately tried to run down troops at a checkpoint near the village of Surda, north of Ramallah.

"It was an attempt to kill the soldiers, just shortly before this happened, and very close to this same spot," an army spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity.

She said the Palestinian driver in that incident had been arrested without injury to himself or soldiers.

The circumstances of Hassan's death are likely to raise sharp new questions about Israeli military procedures and the risks they may pose to Palestinian civilians facing ever-tightening restrictions on their movements between West Bank towns and villages.