DayofPal—Israeli forces shot in the head and executed a seven-month-old Palestinian baby while on his mother’s lab near The thr Tel Rumeida area, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on Friday.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said, amid a surge in Israeli attacks against Palestinians that has killed more than 1,150 people in the West Bank since October 2023.
The Ministry identified the infant as Sam Fahd Abu Haikal and said he was killed at the scene, while his parents were wounded in the shooting and were in moderate condition.
The baby’s grandmother said the family was driving near Checkpoint 17 when they saw Israeli military vehicles and soldiers in the distance and stopped the car.
She said shots were then fired toward them, which they initially believed were warning shots.
“One bullet struck my grandson, traversed his face and crossed his head, striking his mother’s cheek where it lodged,” she said, adding that the bullet had also grazed the father’s finger, and that the mother was in hospital.
His father is Bethlehem University lecturer Fahd Abdul Aziz Abu Haikal.
The family was traveling from Bethlehem to visit the mother’s family in Hebron when soldiers opened fire on their car in the Wadi Al-Hariya neighborhood.
The Israeli army claimed that during the attack , soldiers perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them and one soldier fired single shots at the vehicle.
An initial military inquiry found that those injured were “uninvolved civilians”, the military said, adding that the attack was under review.
Tel Rumeida, an area of Hebron where Israeli settlers live while backed by forces among Palestinian residents, has long been under Israeli attacks in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israeli settlers and forces have carried out intensified and increasingly violent attacks in the occupied West Bank with the purpose of forcing Palestinians out of their homes and lands.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, over 1,152 Palestinians, including 239 children, have been killed and more than 11,885 injured in the West Bank since October 7, 2023.
According to OCHA, between 7 October 2023 and 22 April 2026, 1,081 Palestinians – at least 235 of them children – were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. At least 48 Palestinians have been killed there since the start of this year.
According to UN figures, 230 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces and settlers in 2025.
The Israeli army chief in the West Bank said in May that his troops were “killing like we haven’t killed since 1967”, including fatally shooting Palestinian stone-throwers in the occupied West Bank.
In March, Israeli forces fatally shot two parents and two of their children in the West Bank town of Tammun.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified them as 37-year-old Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, 35-year-old Waad Othman Bani Odeh, seven-year-old Othman and five-year-old Mohammed.
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