Israeli forces kill 2 Palestinian teens in occupied West Bank

Israeli forces have killed two teenage Palestinian boys in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials said, on Friday - the latest bloodshed amid continued violence in the region.

One teenager, identified by the Palestinian health ministry as 17-year-old Muhammad Fouad Atta al-Bayed, was shot in the head by Israeli forces during unrest in the village of Umm Safa, which neighbours Ramallah.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the boy from the Jalazone refugee camp, north of Ramallah, was taken to the Istishari Arab Hospital before dying of his wounds.

It added that Israeli forces had fired live ammunition, tear gas and stun grenades during confrontations with local residents.

The Israeli army said that a member of the paramilitary border police unit opened fire after masked suspects threw stones and rocks at Israeli forces, according to The Associated Press.

It confirmed that a person was hit by gunfire but gave no further details. It said that soldiers opened fire in response to stone-throwing and explosives, hitting one suspect who allegedly had thrown a bomb.

There were no immediate details from Palestinian officials.

A second shooting took place later on Friday in the occupied West Bank’s Nablus governorate, leaving one person dead and another seriously injured, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The Israeli military confirmed it had opened fire upon a vehicle.

“A short while ago, a car-ramming attempt occurred in the town of Sebastia,” the armed forces wrote on Twitter.

“Forces responded with live fire towards the vehicle. The driver was neutralised, and the other suspect was injured and apprehended.”

The Wafa news agency identified the dead victim as 18-year-old Fawzi Makhalfeh. It also released a video of a windshield riddled with bullet holes.

The killing of al-Bayed and Makhalfeh came as part of a year-long period of violence, marked by repeated Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank, which has shown no signs of abating.

More than 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the start of 2023 in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

Raids have only grown deadlier under Israel’s far-right government, which came into power at the start of the year and includes leading figures from Israel’s settler movement, which seeks to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank at the expense of Palestinians.

Earlier this month in Umm Safa, Palestinian health officials said 24-year-old Abdel-Jawad Hamdan Saleh was also fatally shot in the chest by Israeli forces during a demonstration.

Last month, several dozen settlers rampaged through the West Bank village, setting fire to vehicles and homes in days of consecutive vigilante attacks following the deadly shooting of four Israeli settlers at a petrol station between the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Nablus.

The shooting came a day after six Palestinians were killed in the Jenin refugee camp during a large-scale Israeli military incursion.

The torching of homes and properties in Umm Safa drew rare condemnation from the Israeli army’s international media spokesman, who condemned the settler rioting as “acts of terror”, The Times of Israel reported.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid said the violence “crosses all lines”.

“Torching homes and cars of innocents is inhumane and definitely not Jewish. Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu needs to condemn this disgrace and deal with it severely. This is a moral disgrace and security threat,” Lapid tweeted.

The United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk warned that “the violence, along with the inflammatory rhetoric, serve only to drive Israelis and Palestinians deeper into an abyss”.

Source: Aljazeera and news agencies