Two Palestinians, including a child, killed in West Bank by Israeli soldiers: Report

Israeli soldiers killed two people in the West Bank on Tuesday, one of them a 15-year-old boy, AFP reported, citing the Palestinian health ministry. 

"At dawn today, Tuesday, 15-year-old Amjad Nassar Abu Awad was killed by Israeli soldiers in the city of Ramallah," the ministry said in a statement.

The Israeli military told AFP that during an overnight operation in the area, "several terrorists hurled rocks towards [Israeli] soldiers", prompting them to fire "warning shots".

"The incident is under review," it added.

Around 20 people, most of them young boys, gathered at a Ramallah hospital to mourn Abu Awad, an AFP journalist reported.

The boys, who were in tears, touched Abu Awad's face in the hospital morgue.

The ministry also said 24-year-old Samer Bassam Zagharneh was killed by Israeli soldiers near the town of Dhahiriya, in the suburbs of Hebron, at dawn on Tuesday.

The army told AFP that soldiers operating in the area overnight saw a man attempting to cross the frontier between Israel and the West Bank "in the area of al-Ramadin".

"The soldiers opened fire according to standard operating procedures, and a hit was identified", the army said.

Two Palestinian teenagers, aged 13 and 15, were killed last week in the West Bank towns of Al-Yamoun and Kafr Malik, respectively.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and violence towards Palestinians has soared since October 2023. Since then, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 947 Palestinians.

Over the same period, at least 35 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to Israeli figures.