Each person was shot in the head in the town of Tammun, while two other children of the deceased couple were injured.
Israeli forces killed a Palestinian couple and two of their children while driving in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian health authorities, and the Israeli military said the incident is under review.
Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, 37, his wife Waad, 35, 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. According to Palestinian health authorities, two of his other children were injured by shrapnel.
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Speaking to Reuters news agency at the hospital, 12-year-old Khaled, one of two surviving children, said he heard his mother crying and his father praying, but no voices from any of his other siblings before silence prevailed after gunshots hit 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 the soldiers, who pulled him out of the vehicle before beating him, shouted: “We kill dogs.”
The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces were part of an operation in Tammun to arrest Palestinians wanted for their involvement in “terrorist” activities against them.
“During the operation, a vehicle accelerated towards 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 published in
‘Injured children beaten’
Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Tammun, said the family was returning to their village after a day off when the incident occurred.
“They were shocked to see covert Israeli forces shooting at their car non-stop,” he said.
Ibrahim added that Israeli soldiers later pulled the wounded children who survived the shooting out of the car and beat them.
“The extended family says the father and mother didn’t know the Israeli forces were there because they were in a Palestinian car,” he said, adding that it was just a family of six trying to have a normal day.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Health Ministry said another Palestinian was killed in an attack by Israeli settlers overnight.
Israeli settlers in the West Bank are taking advantage of restrictions on movement imposed during the US-Israel war against Iran to attack Palestinians, with military barricades preventing ambulances from quickly reaching victims, human rights and medical groups say.
Settlers have killed at least five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the war with Iran began on February 28, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
In addition, Israeli attacks on Gaza, which had decreased at the beginning of the war with Iran, have begun to increase again. Although a “ceasefire” in Gaza went into effect in October, Israel has frequently violated it.
Gaza officials said Sunday that an Israeli airstrike killed three people – a man, his pregnant wife and their son – in the western Nuseirat area of the central Gaza Strip, raising to at least 26 the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israel in the enclave since the war with Iran broke out.
