By Ali Sawafta and Nidal al-Mughrabi
RAMALLAH/CAIRO, March 15 (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed a Palestinian father, mother, and two of their children as they drove in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, Palestinian health authorities said, and the Israeli military said the incident was under review.
Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, 37, his 35-year-old wife Waad, and two of their children, Mohammad and Othman, aged 5 and 7 respectively, were each shot in the head in the village of Tammun, while two of their other children sustained injuries, according to Palestinian health authorities.
The Israeli military said in a statement that forces had operated in the village of Tammun to arrest Palestinians wanted for involvement in “terrorist” activity against security forces.
“During the operation, a vehicle accelerated toward the forces, who perceived an immediate threat to their safety and responded with gunfire. As a result, four Palestinians who were in the vehicle were killed,” the military said.
The circumstances of the incident are under review, it said.
Speaking to Reuters at the hospital, Khaled, 12, one of the two surviving boys, said he heard his mother crying, his father praying, but no voice of any of his other brothers before silence prevailed after shots sprayed the car.
“We came under direct fire, we didn’t know the source. Everyone in the car was martyred, except my brother Mustafa and me,” the boy said.
He said soldiers, who pulled him out of the vehicle before beating him, cried: “We killed dogs.”
The Palestinian Health Ministry said one Palestinian was also killed in an attack by Israeli settlers overnight.
Israeli settlers in the West Bank are taking advantage of curbs on movement imposed during the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran to attack Palestinians, with military roadblocks preventing ambulances from reaching victims quickly, rights groups and medics say.
Settlers have killed at least five Palestinians in the West Bank since the Iran war began on February 28, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
GAZA DEATHS
In Gaza, health officials said an Israeli airstrike had killed three people on Sunday – a man, his pregnant wife, and their son – in the western area of Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, taking the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the enclave since the Iran war erupted to at least 26.
There was no immediate Israeli response to that report.
While Israeli attacks on Gaza declined at the beginning of the war with Iran, they have since begun to rise again. While a ceasefire went into effect in Gaza in October, there have been regular outbreaks of violence since then.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta, Emily Rose, and Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Shri Navaratnam; Editing by William Mallard and Gareth Jones)
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