RAMALLAH/JERUSALEM, Dec 15 (Reuters) – The Israeli military shot dead a 16-year-old Palestinian during a raid on the town of Tuqu’ on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said, the latest deadly incident in a recent surge of violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The boy was shot after Israeli military forces gathered in the centre of town late on Monday and began firing “indiscriminately”, according to a report by Palestinian state news agency WAFA citing the head of the Tuqu’ town council.
The military shot the teenager, Ammar Yaser Sabbah, with a live round to the chest, the report said. He was rushed to the hospital but did not survive.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Violence has surged in the West Bank this year, and since the start of the two-year war in Gaza in October 2023. Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians have risen sharply, while the military has tightened restrictions on movement and carried out sweeping raids in several cities.
More than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank between October 7, 2023, and November 14, 2025, according to the United Nations. Fifty-nine Israelis have been killed in the West Bank over the same period.
Those killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year include 53 Palestinian minors, according to official Palestinian statistics.
The West Bank is home to 2.7 million Palestinians who have limited self-rule under Israeli military occupation. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have settled there.
Most world powers deem Israel’s settlements – on land it captured in a 1967 war – illegal, and numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions have called on Israel to halt all settlement activity.
Israel denies the illegality of the settlements, citing biblical and historical connections to the land.
Israeli forces have cleared out refugee camps, forcing thousands of Palestinians from their homes and maintaining their longest presence in some West Bank cities for decades.
Human Rights Watch accused Israel in November of war crimes and crimes against humanity over what it said were forced expulsions in the West Bank. Israel denies committing such crimes.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Pesha Magid, writing by Pesha Magid; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
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