Palestinian baby killed as Israeli troops fire on West Bank car

Israeli troops shot and killed a seven-month-old Palestinian boy and wounded his parents after opening fire on the family’s car in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, in an incident the Israeli military said involved soldiers who believed a vehicle was accelerating toward them.

Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was killed Friday evening in the Tel Rumeida area south of Hebron City, the ministry said. His parents were also wounded while driving from Bethlehem to visit family in Hebron, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

WAFA reported that the baby was critically wounded after being struck in the face by the same bullet that injured his mother. His father, Fahd Abu Haikal, a lecturer at Bethlehem University, was shot in the hand, the agency said.

At Al-Ahly Hospital in Hebron, the baby’s father told Associated Press reporters that a bullet entered the car through the windshield before hitting him, his son and his wife.

“It entered the child’s face on the right side and exited on the left, then passed directly into his mother’s face and exited on the other side, with shrapnel lodged near her heart,” Abu Haikal said.

He said the baby’s mother was in critical condition because shrapnel was close to her heart. The family had not yet told her that her son, who turned seven months old on Friday, had died.

The baby’s grandmother, Feryal Abu Heikal, who was also in the car, said the family was driving near a checkpoint and stopped when they saw Israeli military vehicles and soldiers in the distance. She said she initially thought the gunfire consisted of warning shots before the family was struck.

“The scene was horrific to see a seven-month-old baby with a smashed face,” she said. “What kind of army in the world does this?… What happened to my grandson can’t be easily forgotten.”

Al Jazeera, citing WAFA, quoted the grandmother as saying the vehicle was “completely stopped” when soldiers fired. “There was no danger or justification for firing,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces told CBS News that soldiers “perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them” in the Hebron area and that a soldier responded by firing single shots. The military said three Palestinians were injured and evacuated for medical treatment but did not confirm their ages or genders.

An initial inquiry “found that those injured were uninvolved civilians,” the IDF spokesperson said, adding that the incident is under review and that the military “expresses deep sorrow for any harm caused to uninvolved individuals.” The Israeli military also said in a post on X that the soldiers were conducting “operational activity” when the shooting occurred.

Associated Press photos showed the baby’s car seat behind the driver’s seat and damage to the vehicle, including at least one bullet hole in the windshield. The baby’s funeral was expected later Saturday.

The British consulate in Jerusalem said it was “shocked and saddened” by the shooting and called on social media for an “immediate and transparent investigation and accountability,” adding that “civilians must be protected.”

Israeli military operations in the West Bank have expanded since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, triggering the war in Gaza. Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 72,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government and is generally regarded as reliable by United Nations agencies and independent experts.

The United Nations said last month that more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since the war began, including at least 240 children. It said 49 people had been killed since the start of 2026. Al Jazeera reported that an AFP tally based on Palestinian Health Ministry data put the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank since October 2023 at at least 1,080.

In March, Israeli soldiers fired on a car carrying a family in the northern West Bank, killing four people, including two children, the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry said at the time. Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians are rarely penalized and were indicted in fewer than 1% of cases based on 2,427 complaints filed between 2016 and 2024, according to the Israeli rights group Yesh Din.

More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and that Palestinians seek for a future state.