Female Palestinian police graduate

The first class of Palestinian policewomen to complete a new European Union-sponsored training program graduated, part of a broader EU makeover of the demoralized and ill-equipped Palestinian law enforcement agencies.

The 45 rookies will join a small group of women serving in a role still frowned upon in conservative Palestinian society.

Their duties will include traffic patrols, house searches and security checks on women at prisons and institutions such as universities, police spokesman Adnan Dameree said.

He did not have a tally of how many women currently serve in the West Bank, but said that before the June takeover of the Gaza Strip by the Islamic militant group Hamas, the overall number of women in the Palestinian civil police was 500, out of 18,700 officers cited in EU data.