Occupied West Bank (QNN)- Israeli settlers have killed at least 16 Palestinians since the start of this year in the occupied West Bank; the youngest was 13, as settler attacks intensify against Palestinians, with more than 1,150 killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the start of the Gaza genocide.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry on Thursday, 16 Palestinians have been killed since the start of 2026. The youngest of the victims was a 13-year-old child, while the oldest was 60 years old.
Who Were the Latest Victims?
Four Palestinians were killed on Tuesday, according to the Ministry of Health, including two in an attack by Israeli settlers on al-Mughayyir village, east of Ramallah.
The Ministry said a 14-year-old school student, Aws Hamdi al-Na’san, and 32-year-old Jihad Marzouq Abu Na’im were shot dead when settlers attacked the al-Mughayyir Boys School. Four others were wounded. Local officials said Israeli soldiers opened fire while protecting the settlers.
Bassam Abu-Assaf, the principal of the all-boys school that came under fire, said at least five armed settlers had approached the village of Al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, around noon. Some of the students were outside in the schoolyard when the gunfire began, he added.
A video circulated on social media shows the moment 14-year-old Aws, who was in ninth grade, was shot and killed. His friends can be seen rushing to him and carrying his body away.
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The second Palestinian killed, Abu Na’im, was a parent at the school who lived nearby. He rushed to the school when he heard the gunshots, and was then shot himself, Abu-Assaf, the school principal said.
“It was a disaster. Everybody was screaming. It was unbelievable. I’m still processing it. I don’t know how long it will take for the teachers and students to overcome the shock,” he told CNN, adding that four others were injured, including students and parents.
Videos from in front of the school show the streets splattered with blood, gunshots sounding in the distance, and a flurry of men, young and old, frantically running around and calling for help.
In Hebron, 16-year-old Mohammad Majdi al-Jaabari was killed when he was struck by a vehicle belonging to a security convoy escorting an Israeli minister near the settlement of Kiryat Arba. The teenager had been cycling to school shortly after dawn when he was run over.
A 49-year-old died from injuries sustained when Israeli forces shot her during a raid on the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp.
Settler Violence
Israeli settlers and forces are carrying out intensified and increasingly violent attacks in the occupied West Bank with the purpose of forcing Palestinians out of their homes and lands.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 1,152 Palestinians, including 239 children, have been killed and more than 11,885 injured in the West Bank since October 7, 2023. At least 48 Palestinians have been killed since the start of this year; about 16 of them by settlers.
According to OCHA, between 7 October 2023 and 22 April 2026, 1,081 Palestinians – at least 235 of them children – were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Thirty-five of them have been killed since the beginning of 2026.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, an official agency, said Israeli forces and settlers carried out a total of 1,819 attacks in March alone, including 1,322 by the Israeli forces and 497 by settlers.
Violence and harassment by Israeli settlers continued unabated across the occupied West Bank, OCHA added. The attacks have risen dramatically since the start of the genocide in Gaza.
Settler violence has also become a key driver of forced displacement in the occupied West Bank.
The attacks come as Israel’s security cabinet ratified a series of decisions pushed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defence Minister Israel Katz, enabling Israel to claim large areas of the occupied West Bank as “state property”. Amnesty International said the expansion of illegal settlements and state-backed settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory were “a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action”.
In a report issued in March by the UN, the number of Palestinians forcibly driven from their homes by Israel in the occupied West Bank surged 25 percent between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.
Over that period, more than 36,000 Palestinians were displaced. The report recorded 1,732 incidents of settler violence that caused casualties or property destruction, up from 1,400 in the previous reporting period - an increase of nearly 25 percent.
The attacks included sustained harassment, intimidation and the destruction of Palestinian homes, farmland and livelihoods.
“Settler violence continued in a coordinated, strategic and largely unchallenged manner, with Israeli authorities playing the central role in directing, participating in or enabling this conduct,” the report said, making it difficult to distinguish between state and settler violence.
Longstanding and pervasive impunity is “facilitating and encouraging violence against and harassment of Palestinians”, it added.
Israeli soldiers and settlers are also using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts said this week.
Palestinian women, men and children have reported attacks, forced nudity, invasive and painful body cavity searches, Israelis exposing their genitals, including to minors, and threats of sexual violence.
“Sexualized violence is used to pressure communities, shape decisions about remaining or leaving their homes and land, and alter patterns of daily life,” the group of international humanitarian organisations said in a report.
“To force Palestinians out, settlers resort to harassment, intimidation and violence, “with the backing of the Israeli government and military”, Peace Now said.
“No one is putting the pressure on Israel or on the Israeli authorities to stop this and so the settlers feel it, they feel the complete impunity that they’re just free to continue to do this,” said Allegra Pacheco, director of the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of NGOs working to support Palestinian communities against displacement.
Recently, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned in a report that Israeli policies in the West Bank – including “the systematic unlawful use of force by Israeli security forces” and unlawful demolitions of Palestinian homes – aim to uproot Palestinian villages and areas.
“These violations, together with pervasive and growing settler violence committed with impunity, are fundamental to the coercive environment that induces forced displacement and forcible transfer, which is a war crime,” the report said.
It added that these policies are aimed at “altering the character, status and demographic composition of the occupied West Bank, raising serious concerns of ethnic cleansing”.
Human rights groups say the Israeli occupation has allowed the settlers to operate with total impunity in their attacks against Palestinians.
Israeli organization B’Tselem has accused Israel of actively aiding the settlers’ violence “as part of a strategy to cement the takeover of Palestinian land”.
The UN also warned last year that settler attacks were being carried out “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation, of Israeli security forces”.
