West Bank: Palestinian man killed after Israeli boy goes missing

A Palestinian man has been killed in the occupied West Bank and 25 are reported hurt after dozens of Jewish settlers stormed a village during an Israeli search for a missing teenager.

Israeli troops intervened after dozens of settlers stormed al-Mughayyir armed with guns and stones.

It is not yet clear whether the man who died, Jehad Abu Alia, 26, was shot by an armed settler or Israeli soldier.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said live fire hit at least eight people.

Missing Benjamin Ahimeir, 14, has not been found. A huge search is under way.

Local media said the circumstances around the teenager’s disappearance were still unknown and the military was not sure if the incident was terrorism-related. Troops have set up roadblocks in the area.

Israeli media reported that Benjamin Achimeir had left “Gal Farm” in the settler outpost of Malachei Shalom early on Friday, and had not been seen since.

He had been grazing sheep, and the sheep returned to the farm without him, police said. His sister Hannah, quoted by AFP news agency, said he was familiar with the area.

Separately, Israeli forces shot and killed two West Bank Palestinians.

One was confirmed by Hamas to be a local commander of the group. The Israeli military say Mohammed Daraghmeh was killed in a shoot-out with their troops.

There has been a surge in violence in the West Bank since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas’s deadly attacks in Israel on 7 October, which killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

At al-Mughayyir, videos posted on X by an Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, show dark clouds of smoke billowing from burning cars next to an olive orchard, as gunshots are heard. Social media pictures also show what appears to be a crowd of masked settlers.

The father of Jehad Abu Alia, the 26-year-old who was shot, spoke from a hospital in Ramallah, where Jehad’s body had been taken. “My son went with others to defend our land and honour, and this is what happened,” Afif Abu Alia said.

The IDF says its troops, and not settlers, opened fire at stone-throwing Palestinians as “violent disturbances erupted at several points in the area”.

Troops managed to remove the settlers who had entered the village, it said.

“As of this moment, the violent riots have been dispersed and there are no Israeli civilians present within the town,” the IDF said.

The Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Mustafa, has condemned the attack.

Foreign governments including Israel’s closest ally, the US, have repeatedly raised concerns over a surge in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since Israel began its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, though Israel and the US dispute this.

The Palestinian health ministry says at least 460 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since 7 October.

Israeli sources say at least 13 Israelis have been killed there by Palestinians in the same period.

The surge in West Bank violence has prompted the US, UK and France to impose sanctions on some settlers for the first time.

But the casualties there are dwarfed by the Gaza war: more than 33,600 Gazans, the majority of them civilians, have been killed during Israel’s campaign, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

On 7 October gunmen also took more than 250 people hostage. Israel says that of 130 hostages still in Gaza, at least 34 are dead.

Israel has not commented but is widely considered to have carried out that attack targeting the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.