Image by haaretz

A nine-year-old Israeli girl was shot and seriously wounded in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank on Saturday in what police said was a suspected Palestinian militant attack.

“Our suspicion is that this is a terrorist attack,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Rosenfeld said the girl was shot in the chest while she was outside in the garden and that security forces were searching in and around the Psagot settlement, where the shooting occurred, near the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Other reportes said she told ambulance workers that she saw somebody fire at her.

Her condition was initially listed as serious but later upgraded.

Ya’akov Berg, a Psagot resident, told Haaretz: “I was not at home when the incident happened and I rushed home to protect my family. For many years our security situation was terrible and this [incident] doesn’t get us worked up. No coward who shoots at a nine-year-old girl in the middle of the night is going to discourage us.”

Violence in the West Bank has risen in the past few weeks.

Last month two Israeli soldiers were killed in the West Bank in two separate incidents. Authorities said one was killed by a Palestinian who had lured him to his hometown and a second was shot in the city of Hebron by a suspected Palestinian sniper.

Four Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since July, when Israel and the Palestinians restarted peace talks after a three-year stalemate.

The U.S.-brokered negotiations had collapsed in 2010 over Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in a 1967 war and which the Palestinians want, along with the Gaza Strip, for an independent state.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount