Israeli troops kill 7-month-old baby in occupied West Bank

A seven-month-old Palestinian baby, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was killed when Israeli gunfire struck a car in the Tel Rumeida area south of Hebron on Friday evening, June 5. His parents were wounded and were reported to be in moderate condition after the shooting, which left the infant dead at the scene.

The Israeli military said soldiers fired after perceiving a vehicle accelerating toward them near Hebron. An initial military inquiry later found that the three Palestinians who were wounded were uninvolved civilians. The baby’s grandmother, who was in the car, disputed that account, widening the gap between the military’s version and the family’s description of what happened.

The child was buried in Hebron on June 6 after funeral prayers at a nearby mosque. Mourners wrapped the baby in a white shroud and a Palestinian flag before burial, a stark image of how quickly a family outing in the occupied West Bank became a scene of grief and anger. Another report identified the child’s father as Fahd Abdul Aziz Abu Haikal, a lecturer at Bethlehem University, underscoring how the shooting reached beyond a single family into the academic and civic life of Bethlehem.

The killing lands in a West Bank already marked by intensifying violence since Israel’s war on Gaza began in 2023. That wider surge has heightened the danger to civilians moving through the territory, where more than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by Palestinians for a future state. In Tel Rumeida, where the road network, military presence and resident communities sit in close proximity, the lethal encounter over a single car became another reminder of how little margin there is for error, or for survival, in a conflict that repeatedly places children in the path of armed force.