In an early morning military incursion on Monday, Israeli forces stormed the town of Beit Ummar, located northwest of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, leaving two Palestinians dead — one a 15-year-old child — and two others injured, local and official sources confirmed. The deadly confrontation unfolded near Karmei Tzur, an unauthorized Israeli settlement built on occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law.
According to on-the-ground reports, Israeli troops opened fire on a group of young Palestinian locals near the settlement perimeter. Two of those hit were left bleeding for an extended stretch before Israeli forces seized and retained their bodies, per local accounts. The two wounded victims were evacuated to nearby hospitals, where medical staff confirmed their conditions are currently stable. The Palestinian Ministry of Health officially identified the deceased as 15-year-old Reda Sami Hassan Awad and 19-year-old Issa Arafat Ismail Awad.
Israeli military officials defended the operation, stating that troops fired on the group after members allegedly threw Molotov cocktails and started small fires near the settlement boundary. Following the shooting, the Israeli military carried out an extensive house-to-house search operation across Beit Ummar.
In response to the killings, the town declared a full general strike to protest the fatal raid. The incident is part of a sharp upward trend in Israeli military incursions and settler expansion across the occupied West Bank, particularly in the Hebron governorate. Over recent months, Israeli forces have launched repeated incursions into Hebron neighborhoods, enforcing multi-day curfews, blocking access to work and basic services, and deploying armored vehicles and bulldozers to seal off community entrances. These raids often facilitate visits by Israeli officials to the occupied city under heavy military guard; earlier this month, far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir led a heavily secured convoy march through central Hebron, a move that stoked widespread Palestinian anger.
Local residents say the escalating raids have a clear strategic goal: expanding existing Israeli settlement outposts, connecting isolated settlements to one another, and permanently entrenching Israeli settler control across more Palestinian land in the West Bank. Leading international bodies including the United Nations and Amnesty International have repeatedly warned that this pattern of activity constitutes a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Palestinian communities, forcing entire populations out of their historic lands to make way for Israeli settlement expansion.
The latest fatalities have pushed the total death toll from Israeli attacks in the West Bank to 70 since the beginning of 2026, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Of those killed, 17 are children, five are women, and two are elderly. Since the launch of Israel’s large-scale military campaign in the Gaza Strip, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and civilian settlers across the occupied West Bank.