The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the occupied West Bank amid the Gaza genocide has surpassed 1,000, according to the UN, after soldiers killed a young Palestinian child while he was reportedly playing soccer on Thursday.
The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory reported Friday that Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,001 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, 2023. One in every five victims is a child, the office said, with 213 children killed.
This includes the killing of young Mohammad Bahjat Al-Hallaq, who the UN says was just 9 years old, on Thursday. Reports say that Mohammad was playing soccer in a field with friends in Al-Rihiya, south of Hebron, on Thursday evening when Israeli forces opened fire on the group. The children were playing in the field of a girl’s school, according to Palestinian news wire Wafa.
Israeli forces shot Mohammad in the pelvis, and he was transferred to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. He was in the fourth grade.
“It’s normal, they were afraid and ran back towards the village,” one parent whose child was a witness told BBC. “There was no threat, no provocation. Nothing.”
Per BBC, Mohammad’s mother told the Ma’an news agency that he “loved birds, and he told me he wanted to be a heart doctor, he used to say this all the time.”
Israeli forces acknowledged the killing, and claimed the children threatened them with “confrontations and rock-hurling.” No Israeli forces were injured.
The death toll reflects the major increase in Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank as Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
The UN human rights office said that 43 percent of Palestinian death toll in the occupied West Bank in the last 20 years happened in the last two years alone.
“Documentation by the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory attributes this staggering number of killings of Palestinians to the [Israeli military’s] systematic use of lethal force against Palestinians in the vast majority of cases, including live fire, airstrikes, and shoulder-fired missiles, in an unlawful, unnecessary, and disproportionate manner, with evident disregard for Palestinians’ right to life, including children,” the group said in a statement.
Of the 1,001 Palestinians killed in the past two years, 640 were killed with live ammunition, including at least 355 who were shot in the head or upper body, according to the UN office.
The Israeli military was responsible for the vast majority of the death toll. However, the UN office notes that 19 people were killed by Israeli settlers — whose violence is encouraged by Israeli government officials — and that there were an additional 14 killings that could have been committed by either settlers or the military.
This year is on track to be the worst for Israeli settler attacks on record, with settler violence on the rise amid the genocide. In the first 8 months of 2025, the UN recorded 1,069 settler attacks in the occupied West Bank. There were 1,449 attacks recorded in the entirety of 2024, putting 2025 on track for a record high.
The Israeli government has been rapidly expanding settlements amid the genocide. Earlier this year, officials announced a plan for the largest settlement expansion since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, furthering Israel’s “de facto annexation” of the West Bank, rights groups said.
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