In the few moments of silence after the shootings, before he was dragged from the family car, 12-year-old Khaled Bani Odeh thought he was the only member of his family left alive.
Seconds before, his parents and two youngest brothers had been shot dead through the windscreen by Israeli forces, as they drove home after a family shopping trip in the occupied West Bank.
Among the dead was six-year-old Othman – blind and disabled – killed while sitting on his mother’s lap.
“My mother cried out one last time before going quiet,” Khaled said. “My father recited the Shahada [the Islamic declaration of faith] as he died.”
When Israeli forces tried to drag his only surviving brother, Mustafa, from the car, Khaled said he tried to intervene.
“They pulled me out instead and began jumping on my back,” he said. “Then they took me to a corner and questioned me about who had been in the car. I told them it was my mother and father. They accused me of lying and started beating me.”
The family of 37-year-old Ali Khaled Bani Odeh and his 35-year-old wife Waad had been minutes from home when they were killed, in the village of Tammun, near Tubas, just after midnight on Saturday.
Relatives said Ali had recently arrived home in Tammun after six weeks working on a construction site in Israel, and the boys had begged him to take them shopping in Nablus, ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday due at the end of this week.
On that night, as they returned from shopping and dinner in Nablus, the Israeli army said its soldiers and Border Police were operating in Tammun to arrest people suspected of terrorist activity against Israeli security forces.
It said the Bani Odeh family’s car had “accelerated towards the forces, who sensed danger and responded by shooting”.
But a nearby resident, who lives above the road, told us he had been looking out of his window when the incident took place, after hearing sporadic shooting further away. We are not naming him, to protect his identity.
He told us the family car had just turned left into his street, facing uphill, and had come to a complete halt before any shots were fired, contradicting the Israeli army account.
I asked if he had heard any warnings given by the Israeli forces, or any warning shots fired.
“No, nothing,” he said. “The firing directly targeted the car. I just heard the woman in the car screaming. The little kids were crying before they were killed.”
An account from the New York Times describes Waad asking her husband to pull over on the road so she could search for something in her bag.
The Israeli army said the incident was being investigated by the relevant authorities.
We asked for its response to reports that the car had been stationary and fired on without warning, and were told to direct our enquiry to the police. We are waiting for their response.
At the family house, Khaled’s grandmother Najah Bani Odeh sat surrounded by mourners in tightly wrapped woollen shawls and headscarves in black, white and brown.
Beside her, occasionally caressed by the women, stood eight-year-old Mustafa, his expression as fragile as glass.
His grandmother gestured to the bandage across his face.
“It’s shrapnel – glass from the car window when they fired,” she said. “He needs an operation to remove it.”
She said the family had not been aware of any military operation in the village as they drove home.
“They were driving by the school area where the special forces were hiding. The kids were singing and having fun. Mohammed, who was in kindergarten, was sitting between his mum and dad when they were shot.”
She said Mohammed had fallen into Mustafa’s lap when the shooting started, covering Mustafa’s clothes with blood.
Hassan Fuqoha, one of the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance crew members called to the scene, told us that the scene had been completely different from other incidents he had attended, and that both parents and one of the children had had part of their heads blown off.
“I saw a lot of bullet casings, everywhere around the car,” he said. “It was very heavy fire, directly at the car, it’s not normal.”
Residents told us they had found more than 50 bullet casings from assault rifles, of the size used by Israeli armed forces, and handed them over to the authorities.
Another casing was still visible, trapped under rubble by the roadside, near where bloodstains remained streaked along the ground.
Yair Lapid, the head of Israeli opposition party Yesh Atid, criticised Israel’s government for not apologising to the family for the deaths of children.
“A seven-year-old boy with special needs should not die in the wars of adults,” he said.
The use of lethal force against a civilian car carrying four young children has again focused attention on how Israel’s well-armed soldiers respond to Palestinians in the West Bank, and what constitutes a threat.
Najah Bani Odeh told me the killing of her son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren was part of a pattern of rising violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, by both Israeli soldiers and settlers, which has risen sharply since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
“A settler over there goes on rampage hurting men, women and children, and we only defend ourselves by hurling stones,” she said.
“They want to strip us out of our lands. They are now building walls around the lands they have seized and firing at will at anyone approaching.”
Between 7 October 2023 and 15 March 2026, the UN’s humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, says 1,071 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, including at least 233 children.
It says 19 Israeli civilians and 23 Israeli security forces were killed there from October 2023 until mid-October 2025.
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