‘We killed dogs’: Israeli troops kill two children, parents in West Bank

Each person shot in the head in the village of Tammun, while two other children of the deceased couple sustain injuries.

Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian couple and two of their children as they drove in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian health authorities, with the Israeli military saying the incident is under review.

Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, 37, his 35-year-old wife Waad, and two of their children – Mohammad and Othman, aged five and seven, respectively – were shot in the head in the village of Tammun on Sunday. Two of their other children were wounded by shrapnel, according to Palestinian health authorities.

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Speaking to the Reuters news agency at the hospital, Khaled, 12, one of the two surviving boys, said he heard his mother crying, his father praying, but no voice of any of his other brothers before silence prevailed after shots sprayed the car.

“We came under direct fire; we didn’t know the source. Everyone in the car was ⁠martyred, except my brother Mustafa and me,” the boy said.

He said soldiers, who ⁠pulled him out of the vehicle before beating him, shouted: “We killed dogs.”

A mourner carries the body of one of the children killed in the attack [Mohammed Torokman/Reuters]

The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces were part of an operation in Tammun to arrest Palestinians wanted for involvement in “terrorist” activity against them.

“During the operation, a vehicle accelerated toward the forces, who perceived an immediate threat to their safety and responded with gunfire. As a result, four Palestinians who were in the vehicle were killed,” the military said, adding that the circumstances of the incident are under review.

In a statement posted on X, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned the killings, which it said were “not isolated” incidents, but “part of a comprehensive and systematic aggression” towards the Palestinians by Israel.

‘Injured children beaten’

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Tammun, said the family was returning to their village from a day out when the incident took place.

“They were surprised to see undercover Israeli forces shoot towards their car nonstop,” she said.

Mourners pray in front of the bodies of the Palestinian family, parents and their two children, who were killed by Israeli forces in Tammun town near Tubas, occupied West Bank [Mohammed Torokman/Reuters]

Ibrahim added that the Israeli soldiers later took the injured children who survived the shooting out of the car and beat them up.

“The extended family says the father and the mother did not know that Israeli forces were there as they were in a Palestinian car,” she said, adding that this was just a family of six trying to have a normal day.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health, meanwhile, said another Palestinian was killed in an attack by Israeli settlers overnight.

Israeli settlers in the West Bank take advantage of curbs on movement imposed during the United States-Israel war on Iran to attack Palestinians, with military roadblocks preventing ambulances from reaching victims quickly, rights groups and medics say.

Settlers have killed at least five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the Iran war began on February 28, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Also, Israeli attacks on Gaza, which had declined at the beginning of the war with Iran, have begun to rise again. While a “ceasefire” went into effect in Gaza in October, Israel has been frequently breaching it.

Gaza officials on Sunday said an Israeli air attack killed three people – a man, his pregnant wife, and their son – in the western area of Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, taking the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israel ‌in the enclave since the Iran war erupted to at least 26.