A 7-month-old Palestinian infant was killed Friday and his parents wounded when the Israeli army shot at the family’s car in the Tel Rumeida area in the southern occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
It said the Israeli army killed Sam Abu Haikal and that his father, Fahd Abdul Aziz Abu Haikal, a lecturer at Bethlehem University, lived with his wife and son in Bethlehem.
The shooting took place while Abu Haikal was on his way to his mother’s house in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in central Hebron.
Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition, wounding the father in his hand. His wife was also wounded by the same bullet, which pierced the jaw of their infant son. All three were taken to the hospital.
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.
Tel Rumeida, an area of Hebron where Israeli settlers live under heavy military protection among Palestinian residents, has long been a flashpoint for violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Over 700,000 settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank among more than 3 million Palestinians, according to a European Union report in 2024.
The occupied West Bank has witnessed escalating Israeli military raids, arrests and settlement expansion since the start of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023.
