Northwest of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli soldiers opened fire with live ammunition, critically wounding a Palestinian toddler and inflicting serious injuries on his father.
Israeli forces ambushed a vehicle at the entrance to Nabi Saleh village on Thursday night, according to Bilal Tamimi, a local activist, who spoke to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.
The soldiers opened fire on the car as soon as it got close to them, hitting the father and two-year-old boy in the shoulder and the toddler’s head with a bullet.
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The father and the young child were not in the car at the time; instead, they were in the front yard of their house, which is situated close to a checkpoint operated by the Israeli army at the village’s entrance. They were taken urgently to a hospital in the nearby illegal settlement of Neve Tsof. In order to receive medical care, the toddler was later moved to a hospital in the 1948-occupied territories, while the father was transferred to a hospital in nearby Ramallah.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who cited an Israeli army statement, Palestinian insurgents fired shots at the settlement. The two Palestinians were wounded as a result of the Israeli soldiers’ retaliation who were stationed at a nearby post.
Protests broke out at Nabi Saleh’s entrance after the shooting.
Israeli soldiers invaded several neighborhoods, according to Naji Tamimi, the head of the Nabi Saleh Village Council, and shut the Iron Gate at the village’s entrance while firing live ammunition at protesters. They used steel bullets that were rubber-coated to injure two young Palestinian men.
An activist from the area was shot while using his cellphone to record the invasion and was one of those injured.
Only two days prior, an Israeli regime raid on a refugee camp outside of the West Bank city of Nablus left more than 40 Palestinians injured.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, 46 Palestinians received medical attention for injuries they sustained during the dawn raid on the Askar refugee camp on Tuesday.
The Israeli military has been carrying out violent raids on the occupied West Bank under the cover of detaining what it calls “wanted” Palestinians, which has led to heightened tensions in the area.
According to a count by the Associated Press, more than 120 Palestinians have been killed as a result of the Israeli aggressive attack this year.
