Arab Israeli girl killed after shooting at police

Israeli border police said they shot dead a 16-year-old Arab Israeli girl after she opened fire at them in the Negev desert on Saturday.

"Police shot and killed a young woman who opened fire with a gun at the entrance to a base" of border police at Shoket junction, near Beersheva in southern Israel, Major Moshe Finsi said.

The girl, who was identified as Bedouin high school student Basma Awal al-Nadri, had tried to enter the base and been stopped, Finsi said.

"When the sentinel blocked her from entering, she opened fire with a pistol after police demanded that she surrender. So the border police shot back," Finsi said.

"She was carrying a backpack, raising suspicions that she was planning a suicide mission. But it turned out she was not carrying explosives," he added.

Finsi had earlier said the girl was a Palestinian.

No guards were wounded in the incident, after which security forces set up checkpoints on roads leading to the nearby southern West Bank "from where the young woman is believed to have come to carry out the attack."