Palestinian student killed by Israeli border police in Abu-Dis
Agence France Presse
May 10, 2004

JERUSALEM, May 10-- Israeli border guards shot dead a Palestinian teenage student in the east Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis overnight, Palestinian medical sources and witnesses said Monday.

He was identified as 19-year-old Fadi Bahar, a student at the Al-Quds university in Abu Dis, a town which is considered a suburb of annexed east Jerusalem but lies outside the municipality's
borders.

According to witnesses, the Israeli security forces opened fire on Bahar and some of his friends, believing they were behaving in a suspicious manner.

An Israeli military spokesman said the army only had knowledge of an incident in which a Palestinian threw a Molotov cocktail at border guards who responded by firing a warning shot in the air.

"The Palestinian panicked and as he was running away, he was hit by a Palestinian car," the spokesman said.

Bahar was taken to the Makased hospital in east Jerusalem, where he died.

"It is very clear, the youngster died of a wound caused by a live bullet to his head," said Khaled Qorei, the director of the hospital.

Qorei also pointed out that what was once a two-minute trip from the scene of the shooting to the hospital had now been turned into a 15-kilometre (10-mile) hike around the separation wall Israel has erected in Abu Dis.

The latest death brought to 3,976 the number of people killed since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, including 3,001 Palestinians and 905 Israelis, according to an AFP tally.