PALESTINE – Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian woman and her teenage brother on Wednesday, saying they were armed with knives and tried to carry out an attack at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.

Police said the woman, holding a knife, and a man walked rapidly towards police and other Israeli security guards in a vehicles-only lane at the Qalandia checkpoint outside Jerusalem.

“Police called on them several times to stop. When they kept advancing…the officers neutralized the terrorists,” a police statement said.

Palestinian authorities identified the two dead as Maram Abu Ismail, 23, and her 16-year-old brother, Ibrahim Taha, and said they had been en route to Jerusalem for a medical appointment.

The siblings entered the vehicles-only lane by accident and their killing was a “brutal daylight crime” by Israel, the Palestinian Information Ministry said in a statement.