Israeli forces on Friday evening killed a seven-month-old Palestinian baby and wounded his parents in the Tel Rumeida area south of the West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
The ministry identified the infant as Sam Fahd Abu Haikal and said he died at the scene, while his parents sustained gunshot wounds 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.
Photo: AP
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.
The Israeli military said that during operational activity in the Hebron area on Friday, soldiers perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them and one soldier fired single shots at the vehicle. It said three Palestinians were wounded and evacuated for medical treatment.
Photo: AP
An initial military inquiry found that those injured were “uninvolved civilians,” the military said, adding that the incident was under review and that the findings would be submitted to the relevant authorities.
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.
Mor than 700,000 settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank among more than 3 million Palestinians, a European Union report in 2024 said.
Separately, an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed three soldiers, Beirut’s military said on Saturday, as its chief traveled to Pakistan to meet with a key mediator to end the Middle East war.
Israel has launched an operation in Lebanon to root out the Tehran-backed armed group Hezbollah, which drew Lebanon into the wider Middle East war by launching missiles on behalf of its sponsor.
A ceasefire meant to have gone into force in April was never observed, and a new conditional truce announced after Lebanese-Israeli talks in Washington last week was flatly rejected by Hezbollah hours later.
Lebanon has vowed that it would disarm Hezbollah over time, but has also denounced Israel’s invasion, accusing it of employing scorched-earth tactics to drive civilians out of southern towns and villages.
In the latest incident, two officers and a soldier were killed in a strike on a military vehicle on the road between Khardali and Nabatieh, the Lebanese army said.
The Israeli military said the vehicle targeted was “moving suspiciously” in “an active combat zone” in an area it had ordered evacuated ahead of operations.
However, it insisted that it “operates against the Hezbollah terrorist organization, not against the Lebanese army,” and added that it was “reviewing the incident.”
Hezbollah dubbed the attack a “heinous crime” and accused the Lebanese government of exposing its own country to bloodshed through its “complete surrender to the enemy’s demands in Washington.”
UN peacekeepers in Lebanon said that “such attacks in Lebanese territory constitute gross violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty.”
The Lebanese army said on Saturday that “the continuation of the deliberate and repeated brutal Israeli aggression ... is aimed at thwarting all efforts to reach a solution.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun also denounced the attack, calling it a “flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called it “a heinous crime, and an attack on Lebanon and all Lebanese people.”
Aoun and Salam on Friday had accused Iran of using Lebanon as a “bargaining chip” in talks to end the wider war.
Iran insists Lebanon be included in any agreement with the US to end the Middle East conflict.
Lebanese army chief Rodolphe Haykal left for Pakistan on Saturday, in a visit linked to Islamabad’s mediation efforts between Iran and the US, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
In a statement, the army said Haykal was traveling “at the invitation of his Pakistani counterpart, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir.”
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