‘I could have lost Bracha’: Mother of girl hit by bullet in settlement recalls event

The mother of a young girl who was hit by a stray bullet in the West Bank settlement of Kochav Yaakov has spoken about the ordeal.

Six-year-old Bracha was lightly-to-moderately injured Saturday when she was struck by a bullet while outside her home. Military officials said it apparently came from the direction of Qalandiya near Ramallah, north of Jerusalem.

“Friends of my middle daughter, who is eight, came to call for her to come to the yard and she went with them,” mother Yael recounted to Channel 12. “A short time later my youngest daughter, who’d just lost her first tooth, wanted to go and show it to her older sister. I allowed her to go out to the yard, which I can see from the balcony.”

She said that “Suddenly, I saw the older daughter come in crying, carrying young Bracha who was bleeding.

“I lifted her dress and saw a hole in her leg. I shouted ‘What happened, what happened?’ [The friends] said they didn’t know or see anything. They just heard a boom and she fell on the floor and fainted… I kept lifting the dress and suddenly I saw another hole in her body.”

Paramedics rushed to the scene and took Bracha to a Jerusalem hospital.

Yael said Bracha was now feeling better. “She says she heard a boom and something went in her stomach. She’s very afraid, she can’t explain what happened to her.”

Yael complained that bullets are often found on the ground in the community. “It’s intolerable that police and the army don’t take care of it. It causes a feeling of insecurity,” she said.

“I could have lost Bracha. It all happened in a second.”