An Israeli drone strike killed three cousins, including two children, in the West Bank on Wednesday, according to Palestinian officials and a family member, as growing violence threatens to further destabilize the Israeli-occupied territory.
The attack struck the courtyard of the cousins’ home in the town of Tamoun, said Ahmed Asad, the Palestinian governor of the Tubas region. He identified the dead as two young children, Rida Basharat and Hamza Basharat; and Adham Basharat, a young man.
Israeli soldiers seized the three shortly after the airstrike, leaving it unclear whether they were alive or dead, said Mr. Asad. Israeli officials later informed their Palestinian counterparts that the three had been killed, he added.
The Palestinian Authority’s Civil Affairs branch, which handles coordination with Israel, announced on Wednesday evening that Israeli officials had handed over the bodies of the three cousins for funeral rites.
The Israeli military said it had launched a drone strike in Tamoun against a “terrorist cell,” but did not immediately comment on the claim that two children had been killed. It later released a statement saying that “due to various reports regarding the results of the strike, the incident is under review.”
The cousins’ immediate families could not immediately be reached, but Mamun Abu Muhsin, a member of their extended family, confirmed their deaths in a phone interview on Wednesday night after he said their bodies had been returned by Israeli forces.
Violence has spiraled in the West Bank for the past year and a half, as Israel has fought wars with armed groups like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israeli forces have escalated raids in Palestinian cities in the West Bank — operations that can last for days at a time — bulldozing roads and engaging in shootouts with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants.
Wednesday’s aerial bombardment came in the wake of a Palestinian shooting attack two days earlier that killed three Israelis, including two women in their 70s. Israeli officials quickly vowed retribituion for the deadly attack.
“We are witnessing accelerating attempts to advance Palestinian terrorism in Judea and Samaria,” said Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, on Wednesday, using the biblical names for the West Bank, which the Israeli government considers disputed, not occupied, territory. He said that Israel would “respond accordingly” to protect its citizens, roughly 500,000 of whom live in settlements in the West Bank.
More than 800 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since October 2023, in the wake of the Hamas-led attack that prompted the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry. It is unclear how many were combatants, but the numbers include some civilians, including women and children killed by Israeli security forces.
About 50 Israelis were killed by Palestinians in militant attacks in the West Bank over the same time, according to the United Nations. Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, has said that it thwarted more than a thousand attacks in 2024, including hundreds of shooting attacks.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers some parts of the territory under Israeli occupation, also launched its own operation against Palestinian militants in Jenin in December. Several Palestinian officers have been killed, as well as some civilians, including a young woman and a teenage bystander.
