Israeli Security Forces Kill Four Bani Odeh Family Members Near Tubas in West Bank

In the night from Saturday to Sunday, March 15, four members of the Bani Odeh family—two young boys aged 5 and 6 and their parents—were killed by Israeli security forces as they were returning to their hometown, Tammoun, near Tubas in the occupied West Bank.

“Palestinian Ministry of Education said that the Yanun School was providing education for 15 students before the residents of Khirbet Yanun were forcibly displaced”

Anadolu Ajansi

Courrier international said the family had gone to the neighboring city of Nablus, about twenty kilometers away, to buy clothes for the Eid festival, and that around 1:30 a.m. Israeli soldiers opened fire without warning on the vehicle passing through sleepy Tammoun.

Anadolu Ajansi

France 24 reported that Ali Khaled Bani Odeh and his wife Waad, aged 37 and 35 respectively, and their children Mohammad and Othman, five and seven years old, were all shot in the head, while two other children were wounded, with the Palestinian health services describing the shooting as occurring in the village of Tammoun.

The Palestinian health services and the Palestinian Red Crescent said the couple’s other two children, aged eight and 11, were injured by bullet fragments, and Le Figaro and Le Monde both said the bodies were recovered from a vehicle in which Israeli forces had fired in Tammoun.

Reuters and the Israeli army and police said the incident occurred during a joint operation by the Border Police and soldiers attempting to arrest people suspected of being involved in terrorist activities against security forces, after a vehicle accelerated toward the security forces and they opened fire, killing four Palestinians who were in the vehicle.

Dozens of Palestinians gathered Sunday, March 15 in Tammoun for the funeral of the couple and their two young children, as regional tensions were described as intensifying in the occupied West Bank.

Khaled, 12, told Reuters at the hospital that he had heard his mother crying and his father praying before the silence fell in the bullet-riddled vehicle, and he said, "We were shot at directly; we did not know where it came from."

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Courrier international said the Israeli army claimed its soldiers felt threatened because the family’s father allegedly accelerated toward the car, but it quoted a family member who said the justification was "totally absurd."

RFI said the army and police stated in a joint release that the facts occurred during a joint operation by the border police and Israeli soldiers attempting "to arrest people suspected of being involved in terrorist activities against security forces," and that a vehicle sped toward the security forces, which responded by opening fire killing four Palestinians in the vehicle.

RFI also described a version strongly contested by the victims' relatives and local authorities, who denounced a cold-blooded execution of civilians in a climate of extreme tensions in the West Bank.

The killings in Tammoun were presented in multiple reports as part of a wider escalation of violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, and violence continued despite a ceasefire that took effect on October 10 in Gaza.

“In the night from Saturday to Sunday, March 15, four members of the Bani Odeh family, two young boys aged 5 and 6 and their parents, were killed by Israeli security forces as they were returning to their hometown, Tammoun, a town of about 15,000 inhabitants”

Courrier international

RFI cited an AFP tally based on figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry saying at least 1,045 Palestinians, including many fighters but also civilians, have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, and it said at least 45 Israelis, civilians and soldiers, have been killed there in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations according to official Israeli data.

UN News said the displacement of more than 36,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank constitutes "a massive expulsion of Palestinians on an unprecedented scale," warning that the displacements coincide with mass displacement in Gaza and seem to indicate "a concerted Israeli policy of large-scale forced transfer" across the occupied territories.

UN News also reported that OHCHR’s latest report covering the period from November 2024 to the end of October 2025 concluded the "illegal transfer" of Palestinians constitutes a war crime and, in certain circumstances, can amount to a crime against humanity.

In the same UN News account, Volker Türk called on Israel "to immediately and completely cease the creation and expansion of settlements" and to "end the occupation" of the Palestinian territories, while also urging Israel to allow the return of displaced Palestinians and to end practices of land confiscation, forced expulsions and demolitions of homes.