19-Year-Old Killed in Ramlah Ambush After Warning, 'If I Die, You Will Know Who Killed Me'

Asma Abu Ghanem, 19, was shot dead overnight Wednesday to Thursday inside a car in the Juarish neighborhood of Ramla. Before her killing, she posted a story saying, “If I die, you will know who killed me,” and relatives said she had been living in fear after threats and abuse.

According to the initial police assessment, the shooting was a planned ambush that drew her back to Ramla, which she had recently left because she feared for her life. A man had called her hours earlier, asked her to come to Ramla, and reassured her that it was safe and that “people missed her and wanted to meet her.” When she arrived at the meeting point, she got into a car with a man, and possibly another young woman. The vehicle then stopped, a masked assailant approached, and shot her at close range. A relative who witnessed the attack drove her, without a license, to hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Her friends said Abu Ghanem had a difficult life, including violence, threats, and pressure in her personal life. One friend told ynet that Abu Ghanem had complained repeatedly about threats, filed a police complaint with her, and was advised to enter a protected shelter, but that plan never materialized. “She was supposed to have love, protection and a hug,” the friend said, adding that Abu Ghanem had been forced into marriage and later divorced.

Police had previously received information that she was under threat. A police source said she was summoned to a meeting and told she was being threatened “on the background of family honor,” and shelter was offered to protect her. Some women who knew her said she had in fact stayed in a shelter in the past. Her mother, Narmin Masoud, was murdered in December 2010 while nine months pregnant, and her father, Mahmoud Ali Abu Ghanem, was killed on 5 September 2024 in a car bombing in Ramla. The deadly night also saw the killing of 16-year-old Ahmad Jabrari in Jaffa, and separate serious shooting incidents in Lod and Jisr az-Zarqa, plus gunfire at the home of a local council head in Arara-Arara.