A Palestinian worker, his wife, and their two children were killed after midnight, Sunday, March 15, by Israeli occupation forces in the town of Tammun, south of Tubas, while their two other children were injured by shrapnel. WAFA reported that Israeli special forces infiltrated the town, followed by military reinforcements arriving from the Ein Shibli checkpoint and the Tayasir checkpoint. 

Soldiers opened fire on a vehicle, killing Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, 37, his wife Waad Othman Bani Odeh, 35, and their two children, Mohammed, 5, and Othman, 7. Their other two children, Mustafa, 8, and Khaled, 11, sustained minor shrapnel injuries to the head and face.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces prevented its crews from reaching the injured inside the vehicle and forced them to leave the area before later allowing them to retrieve the four bodies — a man, a woman, and two children — along with the two injured children.

MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash) said: “Another massacre in the occupied West Bank. Parents and two children were murdered in cold blood, simply because they are Palestinian. Meanwhile, Israeli society is split between those who are silent and those who are celebrating. Disgraceful.”

Farewell and funeral procession for the Bani Odeh family, who were assassinated by Israeli special forces at dawn on Sunday in the town of Tammoun, south of Tubas (Photo: Mohammad Mansour/WAFA)

On Saturday evening, a Palestinian young man was killed, and two others were injured by live ammunition, while another was beaten, during an attack by settlers on the town of Qusra, south of Nablus. Medical sources announced the killing of Amir Moatasem Mahmoud Odeh, 25, after he was shot in the chest with live ammunition. Two others were injured by live fire in the knee and thigh, while the father of the slain man was assaulted and beaten during the attack.

The head of the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, Minister Muayyad Shabaan, said that settlers carried out a total of 192 attacks during the last two weeks of the ongoing Israel-US war against Iran, resulting in the killing of six Palestinians. The Minister, in a special report issued by the Commission, stated that settlers have exploited the current regional war to escalate attacks on Palestinian villages and communities, capitalizing on the international and regional focus on the broader Iran–Israel–US war. He described these attacks as organized and systematic, including direct gunfire at civilians, the torching of homes and property, and the imposition of new facts on the ground.

He emphasized that these attacks are part of a broader dynamic, aimed at exploiting the current regional and international preoccupation to accelerate changes to the geographic and demographic reality of the West Bank, at the expense of the Palestinian presence. He noted that the attacks were largely concentrated in the Hebron Governorate, with 47 recorded, followed by Tubas (42), Nablus (35), Bethlehem (14), and Jerusalem (12), with additional attacks reported in other areas.

Shabaan clarified that this wave of attacks has resulted in the forced displacement of four Palestinian Bedouin communities over the past two weeks, impacting thirty-seven families—191 individuals in total, including 65 women and 106 children. Shabaan reported that colonists carried out 46 acts of vandalism, including the destruction of property and crops and land leveling, alongside three attacks on religious sites. These attacks included an attempted arson at the Muhammad Fayyad Mosque in Duma, south of Nablus, an assault on the Majdal Bani Fadil Mosque, and continued incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, denying Palestinian citizens’ access to the holy Muslim site.

He noted that over the past two weeks, colonists attempted to establish eight new settlements as part of a series of measures to impose facts on the ground, which the official institution undertakes to convert into a fact on the ground, within a framework that rises to the level of functional exchange between the occupation government and the settler militias on the ground.

Shabaan urged the international community, along with human rights and humanitarian organizations, to uphold their legal and moral obligations and halt these violations and safeguard the Palestinian people, their land, and their holy sites.