Two Palestinian teenagers were killed on Wednesday during an operation in the occupied West Bank village of al-Mughayyir, local officials and the Palestinian health ministry said. The health ministry identified the youths as 16 and 19 years old, and a local official told Palestinian news agency WAFA the deaths occurred in the village near Ramallah.
According to an Israeli military statement, its forces entered al-Mughayyir to provide security for police officers and for an Israeli civilian who was seeking to retrieve livestock. The military said troops fired and struck what it described as "key instigators" during a "violent disturbance" in which people threw stones at the forces. The military added that the incident is under investigation.
Local and Palestinian health officials attributed the deaths to an attack involving both Israeli settler militants and army troops. The accounts from Palestinian authorities and the military overlap on some points - notably the presence of Israeli forces in the village - while differing on characterization of the events leading up to the fatalities.
This incident occurred amid an uptick in violence by Jewish settlers across the territory. The killings follow a period of intensified settler militant activity in the occupied West Bank, and come after a siege by settlers of Qusra village in August that drew international condemnation, according to officials cited in reports.
Officials note that the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has overseen a rapid expansion of settlements in the West Bank, territory captured by Israel in 1967. The government has established dozens of new settlements and settler outposts in the area. Rights groups, cited in reporting, say the growing settler presence on the margins of Palestinian villages, including Qusra, is part of a broader effort by settlers to seize additional land from Palestinians. They say this trend reduces the territory Palestinians aim to set aside for a future state.
The killings in al-Mughayyir have been reported amid heightened tensions across the West Bank, with authorities on both sides noting the need for investigations and further clarity on the circumstances that led to the deaths of the two teenagers.