Israeli Forces Kill Parents and 2 Children in West Bank, Beat Surviving Children

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Israeli Forces Kill Parents and 2 Children in West Bank, Beat Surviving Children

“Targeting an entire family in this savage manner reveals the true nature of the Israeli occupation and its policies based on killing and extermination, destruction and displacement,” the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

OLIVIA ROSANE

Mar 15, 2026

The Israeli Defense [sic] Forces killed a Palestinian couple and two of their children in the West Bank on Sunday, on one of the deadliest days for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in weeks.

The soldiers opened fire on a car in the village of Tammun in which 37-year-old Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, his 35-year-old wife Waad, and their four sons Mohammad, Othman, Mustafa, and Khaled were traveling. Odeh, Waad, 5-year-old Mohammad, and 7-year-old Othman were shot in the head and died, leaving behind two injured children.

“We came under direct fire, we ⁠didn’t know the source. Everyone in the car was martyred, except my brother Mustafa and me,” one of the surviving children, 12-year-old Khaled, told Reuters from the hospital.

He said that after the shooting was over, the Israeli soldiers pulled him out of the car and began to beat him, telling him, “We killed dogs.”

“These crimes occur within a systematic policy pursued by the occupation authorities using lethal force against Palestinian civilians.”

The soldiers also beat his other surviving brother, according to Al Jazeera.

The Israeli military said that it had been operating in Tammun to make arrests on “terrorist” charges and that soldiers had fired on a vehicle when it accelerated toward them, according to Reuters. It said it was reviewing the incident.

Al Jazeera journalist Nida Ibrahim said that the family had been totally shocked by the shooting.

“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.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the killing on social media as a “terrifying arbitrary execution crime that targeted an entire Palestinian family inside their vehicle.”

The Israeli soldiers also prevented Red Crescent workers from reaching the family, the ministry said, leading to the families’ “deliberate and cold-blooded execution.”

The ministry continued: “The Ministry affirms that targeting an entire family in this savage manner reveals the true nature of the Israeli occupation and its policies based on killing and extermination, destruction and displacement, amid a systematic impunity, and it further affirms that these crimes, concurrent with the escalation of settler crimes and their organized terrorism in the occupied West Bank, are not isolated incidents, but part of a comprehensive and systematic aggression aimed at exterminating the Palestinian people and displacing them, in clear exploitation of the escalation occurring in the region.”

In a statement issued on social media, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) also blamed the deaths on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which has been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice.

 “This escalation in these crimes comes as a direct result of the expansion of shooting instructions in the Israeli army, the rising violence of settlers amid the prevalence of an impunity policy, and the entrenchment of ethnic cleansing amid unprecedented international silence,” PCHR said.

 It continued: “While the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights condemns the unjustified murder crimes committed by occupation forces and settlers, it affirms that these crimes occur within a systematic policy pursued by the occupation authorities using lethal force against Palestinian civilians, in flagrant violation of the principles of necessity and distinction that form fundamental pillars of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Moreover, they come as part of a pattern aimed at terrorizing citizens, intimidating them, and entrenching ethnic cleansing policies, and replicating acts of genocide, albeit in a less overt manner.”

 Also on Sunday, Israeli settlers killed a Palestinian man in Nablus Governorate, making him the sixth man killed by settlers since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. Movement restrictions imposed due the war have emboldened setters to attack, knowing that ambulances will be delayed in reaching their victims, human rights advocates and healthcare workers told Reuters.

 In total, Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed 25 Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, PCHR said.

 In Gaza, where Israeli strikes at first declined following the beginning of the Iran war, the death toll is rising again. On Sunday, Israeli strikes killed nine police officers in Zawayda and a pregnant woman, her husband, and son in Nuseirat.

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