Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian youth in Jerusalem

Israel claims young man was armed with knives and tried to attack soldiers, but his family says shooting was unprovoked.

The checkpoint where a young Palestinian was shot dead after an incident with Israeli soldiers [Getty Images]

Israeli soldiers have shot and killed a young Palestinian man after an incident near a checkpoint in the East Jerusalem area, police say.

Israeli police said the young man wielded two knives and had tried to attack the soldiers on Saturday, however the dead man’s relatives have denied the claim.

The youth was aged 16, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The incident occurred around midnight near the A-Zayyim checkpoint at the outskirts of East Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.

The dead man’s cousin, Haitham Abu Ghanam told the Reuters news agency that his cousin was killed for no reason.

“We were shocked to hear the news of the death of our cousin, he is a martyr,” Ghanam said.

“He arrived to A-Zayyim checkpoint when the soldiers shot him for no reason, without him attacking them. Witnesses told us that they saw them (the soldiers) shooting him and executing him,” he said.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri told Reuters that paramilitary border police fired warning shots into the air to warn the man.

Samri said the troops “fired precise shots neutralising him (the suspect)” when he failed to heed their warnings, and that doctors had confirmed the suspect had died of his injuries.

Israeli tanks fired at Gaza on Friday after Israel said a rocket was fired from the territory during Independence Day celebrations a day earlier. There were no casualties in those incidents.