Israeli soldiers and settlers fired on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, killing two, including a child, Palestinian witnesses and local authorities said. The shooting was in the village of Al Mughayir, where tensions over Israeli settlement expansion and violence have surged of late.
The Palestinian authorities initially said the gunmen were Israeli settlers who had attacked a boys’ school. The school’s principal and the mayor of the village later said that both settlers and Israeli soldiers had opened fire.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had dispatched soldiers to Al Mughayir on Tuesday following a report of rocks being thrown at an Israeli vehicle carrying several people, including a reserve soldier. The military said that the reservist “exited the vehicle and opened fire at suspects in the area.”
The military said soldiers had acted to disperse what it described as a violent confrontation in the area. It said it was aware of the reports of the two fatalities and additional people who were injured and was reviewing the incident.
The Palestinian health ministry identified the dead as Aws Hamdi al-Naasan, 14, and Jihad Marzouq Abu Naim, 32, and said that at least three more Palestinians were also injured in Tuesday’s shooting.
Some reports in Palestinian media said Aws was 13. Palestinian officials said that his father, Hamdi al-Naasan, was killed by Israeli settlers in 2019.
Settler attacks on Palestinians have escalated in the West Bank since October 2023, when the Hamas-led attack on Israel ignited the two-year war in Gaza. The violence has intensified in recent weeks as global attention has focused on the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and fighting in Lebanon.
Al Mughayir, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, has been a particular source of tension as extremist Jewish settlers have homed in on the area, making aggressive moves to take control of land there.
The school’s principal, Bassam Abu Assaf, said a large group of armed settlers was seen coming down from the surrounding hills at around noon. “It was clear the school was their destination,” he said in a telephone interview, about three hours after the shooting. “It was a scary moment.” He said settlers had never approached the school before.
Mr. Abu Assaf said the staff tried to evacuate the roughly 460 students, and described intense shooting in the vicinity of the school by the settlers who, he said, were joined by Israeli soldiers.
Footage circulating on social media showed a gunman firing multiple shots toward the school as screams are heard in the distance. Another video showed that there appeared to be several people alongside the shooter as children ran from the school grounds amid gunfire. A clip showing the aftermath showed two victims being carried away from the scene.
“It felt like an explosion from the amount of smoke and the bullets flying over our heads,” Mr. Abu Assaf said.
The mayor of Al Mughayir, Amin Abu Alia, said in an interview that settlers have been approaching the village almost daily in recent months, forcibly evicting Palestinian sheep herders living in the area. Mr. Abu Alia said he had heard from the school principal and the families of students that settlers were approaching and that parents had set out to pick up their children.
“Chaos ensued when they arrived at the school to find that the army had also arrived and had started firing tear gas and live bullets,” he said, adding that people had “tried to fend off the settlers” and that Mr. Abu Naim was killed first. Then, the mayor said, the young teenager fell down by the gate of his school.
The day began with another deadly event elsewhere in the West Bank. A Palestinian boy, Muhammad Majdi al-Ja’bari, 16, was killed early Tuesday morning while riding a bicycle near the city of Hebron when a car driven by the security detail of an Israeli minister living in the area ran him over. The Israeli police said they were investigating the incident as a fatal traffic accident.
More than 270 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli fire over the past 15 months, about 250 of them by Israeli security forces and at least 17 by settlers, according to the United Nations office that monitors Israeli activity in the occupied territory. In other cases, the circumstances were unclear.
At least 17 Israelis were killed in the West Bank during the same period, six of them members of the security forces, according to the U.N. data.
The United Nations has registered at least 2,380 settler attacks that have resulted in casualties or property damage since the beginning of 2025, with the highest concentration — more than 650 attacks — occurring in the Ramallah district.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Arijeta Lajka contributed reporting.
