Israeli soldiers shot and killed on Thursday evening a Palestinian Taxi driver near Al Bathan Israeli checkpoint, north east of the West Bank city of Nablus; the driver dies instantly of his wounds.
The driver, Zakariyya Dharaghma, 40, from the West Bank city of Tubas, died before an ambulance that belongs to the Palestinian Medical Relief Associated managed to reach him. His body was transferred to Rafidia hospital in Nablus, and his relatives took his body later on and returned to his city, Tubas.
He suffered a life round that penetrated his chest and exited from his back, a medical source at Rafidia hospital reported.
Dharaghma was transporting passengers when he was stopped at the Israeli roadblock along with hundreds of residents and vehicles waiting to be allowed through after the soldiers closed the checkpoint without any apparent reason and barred the residents from crossing.
Taxi drivers tend to approach the checkpoint from an access road located to its east in order pick up passengers. The checkpoint also has mounds of earth placed around it in order to bar the residents from approaching the soldiers and to block straight driving on the road.
An Israeli army source claimed that Dharaghma approached a “closed zone” – and soldiers opened fired.
Earlier this week, Israeli troops detained a 15-year old Palestinian child after claiming that he attempted to bypass a line of people waiting to be inspected at Huwwara checkpoint, near Nablus.
Soldiers violently attacked the child, wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him; the child was released later on.
