JERUSALEM, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli female border police who shot an Arab teenager on Wednesday after he held a fake gun to another soldier's head is wanted "for murder" on Arabic Facebook pages.
These pages also demand that the woman, aged 20, be tried at the Hague Court for killing the teenager. The soldier, whose identity has not been revealed for security reasons and whose face was blurred on Israeli media, has appeared in different pages on Facebook without her face pixelated, The Times of Israel reported on Thursday.
The young woman told Israeli media on Wednesday that she was forced to shoot the youth after he held another soldier at gun point at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron.
"With one hand he grabbed the soldier's neck and pressed against him, and with the other he put the pistol to the soldier's temple. In that situation, the soldier couldn't break free or react," the woman recounted.
She then shot the teenager, saying that she followed standard procedure on such situations.
"My subordinate's life was in immediate danger," she said, referring to the fact that the gun being used to threaten the soldier was a counterfeit one.
Though an investigation has been launched to determine what happened, an army spokesperson told Xinhua that the female soldier followed the procedures on such cases.
According to Maan, the Palestinian news agency, the boy was Muhammad Ziad Awad Salaymah, aged 17, whose brother was released from Israeli prison following the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange last year.
After Salaymah's death, riots between Palestinians and the Israeli army broke out in Hebron without any wounded, and resumed Thursday morning after the youth's funeral.
Last week, a Palestinian policeman attacked an Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldier on a patrol in Hebron, after a fight broke out between a group of Palestinian policemen and IDF soldiers during an arrest of a Palestinian man.
Then, dozens of Palestinians hurled stones and were retaliated by the soldiers with grenades and tear gas. The Palestinians reported 23 lightly injured people from gas inhalation. One Israeli soldier was lightly wounded in his nose.
Israel Radio on Thursday reported that the IDF has seen an escalation of violence in the West Bank since Palestinian National Authority's President Mahmoud Abbas' successful UN bid last month.
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