Israeli soldiers fired on a car carrying a family in the northern occupied West Bank town of Tammun, killing four people including two children, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry.
The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said Ali and Waed Odeh and two of their four children were shot in the head. The group said the Odehs’ two surviving children had shrapnel wounds and were examined by first responders once they were granted access, accusing Israel of delaying ambulances dispatched to the scene.
Israel’s military and police said in a joint statement that forces opened fire after a car accelerated toward them in Tammun, describing the operation as a pursuit of suspects accused of “terrorist activity.” The statement said the shooting was under investigation.
Najah al-Subhi, who lost a son and grandchildren in the incident, told AP that the family had gone to a mall in Nablus to buy clothes for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan this week. She said the two surviving children sustained shrapnel wounds in the eye and the head.
Tammun’s mayor, Sameer Basharat, said he heard about what happened to the Odeh family in the middle of the night. Basharat said the car was shot in the town’s center, where the Israeli army maintains a daily military presence.
Basharat said residents have faced evictions by the army and been denied access to farmland over the past year, and he said Israel has been seizing land in preparation for a new fence that would divide the Jordan Valley. He also said the town has seen frequent raids and road closures affecting life and livelihoods, adding that people in Tammun were experiencing deep sorrow over what happened to the family on Sunday.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said the Odeh family’s car was riddled with bullets and that Israeli forces “violently interrogated” one of the surviving children who was wounded. B’Tselem also said “No effective mechanism exists to hold those responsible to account.”
Yesh Din said Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians are rarely penalized, citing that they were indicted in fewer than 1% of cases based on 2,427 complaints alleging wrongdoing between 2016 and 2024. The deaths of the Odeh family were described by AP as the latest casualties in the occupied West Bank, where at least eight Palestinians had previously been shot and killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers since the start of the Iran war.
AP said that after Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran on Feb. 28, Israeli authorities restricted movement across the West Bank by intermittently closing hundreds of gates and checkpoints on roads used by residents, ambulances and commercial traffic. The Red Crescent told AP last week that barriers tightened movement and made emergency response significantly more difficult.
Yesh Din said on Wednesday that it had documented 109 incidents of settler violence in the occupied West Bank in dozens of Palestinian communities since the start of the war. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded 18 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank since the start of 2026, including eight killed by Israeli settlers.