2-year-old Palestinian girl killed in her home by Israeli military
Laila Al-Khatib was shot in head during a raid in the West Bank, Health Ministry says
Israeli forces shot a two-year-old girl in the head in her home in the occupied West Bank on Saturday while she was eating dinner with her family, according to health officials and family members.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says Laila Muhammad Al-Khatib was shot dead during an Israeli military raid on the village of Ash-Shuhada, just south of Jenin.
"They started to shoot at us through the windows without any warning," Ghada Asous, the toddler's grandmother, said. "All of a sudden, the special forces raided us and were shooting through the windows."
Media reports say the girl's pregnant mother also sustained light injuries. Images from the scene showed bullet holes in the home's windows.
A funeral was held on Sunday.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said troops on a counterterrorism operation fired at a structure where suspected militants had barricaded themselves, acknowledging that citizens were injured in the process.
In a statement sent to CBC News, the IDF said that "immediately after they opened fire," soldiers identified injuries among "uninvolved citizens" who were present in the structure and co-ordinated with aid organization Red Crescent to evacuate them.
"The IDF regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians and takes various measures to prevent such incidents," the statement said. "The incident will be examined, and lessons will be learned accordingly."
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director with Human Rights Watch, told CBC News the group has documented a wide range of unlawful killings of children and other civilians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
"In this particular case, it speaks to a pattern of such a reckless disregard for Palestinian life that bystanders and others are often regularly caught up in the killings," he said.
Shakir said the recent escalation of Israeli military violence in the West Bank has been "dramatic" and "alarming."
An Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinian militants in the city of Tulkarm on Monday, according to Hamas and Israeli military officials.
In Jenin, further north, a major operation with hundreds of Israeli troops backed by armoured vehicles, drones and helicopters, looked set to go into a second week, with smoke rising above the refugee camp adjacent to the city.
The raid in Jenin, which is seen as a hub for Palestinian resistance groups, started the day after a ceasefire took effect in the Gaza Strip.
Armoured bulldozers and diggers have destroyed buildings and roads in the camp — a crowded township built for descendants of Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in the 1948 war amid the creation of Israel. Thousands of people have left their homes.
At least 16 Palestinians have been killed in Jenin and surrounding areas since the start of the operation a week ago, including four claimed as fighters by Hamas and the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague said in July that Israel's occupation of the West Bank violates international law, writing in a non-binding advisory opinion that Israel should end its presence in occupied Palestinian territories as rapidly as possible. Israel has rejected the findings.
With files from Kevin Maimann and CBC News