RAMALLAH: Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian motorist at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, with Israeli army claiming he had tried to grab a soldier’s gun while Palestinian officials said he had been shot in the neck.

Palestinian medics summoned to the scene near Silwad village said they found 45-year-old Ahmad Kahla with a fatal bullet wound to the neck. His son Qusai Kahla had been pepper-sprayed, they said. Relatives said both father and son worked in construction and had been driving together to their jobs.

Palestinian officials condemned what they labelled the “execution” of a Pales­tinian man at an Israeli checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian health ministry said he was shot in the neck.

The ministry slammed the “heinous execution” of Ahmad Kahla, who was shot dead in the morning by troops near the village of Silwad north of Ramallah. His son Qusai Kahla told AFP he was in the car with his father when they were stopped at the checkpoint. “Soldiers came and they sprayed pepper spray on my face and pulled me out of the car,” he said at the family home in Rammun village.

“I don’t know what happened after that,” he said. “I found out from my uncle that my dad was killed.” Israel’s military, meanwhile, said the Palestinians had refused to stop and soldiers used “riot dispersal means in order to detain one of the suspects in the vehicle”

A statement from an Israeli army spokesperson said troops had “identified a suspicious vehicle which refused to stop for a routine inspection” and had “used riot dispersal means in order to detain one of the suspects in the vehicle”.

In an ensuing “violent confrontation”, one of the suspects was shot as he tried to seize one of the soldiers’ weapons, said the statement, without specifying whether the suspect shot was the same as the one detained.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2023