Two Palestinian men were shot dead and at least three others wounded in the West Bank village of Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah, during a night-time incursion by Israeli settlers who were searching for livestock under the protection of Israeli troops and police. The Palestinian health ministry named the dead as Awda Abdul Rahim Awda Farakhna, 53, a member of the village council, and Ahmad Adel Rashid Abu Mukh, 26.

According to the Israeli military, forces were dispatched after reports that Israeli civilians had entered the area to recover animals bearing identifying marks. The military said soldiers secured the civilians and then faced a “violent riot” in which “terrorists” hurled stones and concrete blocks, wounding two security personnel. Troops responded with live fire “to remove the threat.” Palestinian witnesses and local officials offered a sharply different account. The head of the Deir Jarir village council, Eid Hammad, told Agence France-Presse that settlers marked sheep for confiscation, loaded them onto a vehicle, and, backed by soldiers, searched homes and animal pens. Residents who tried to intervene were met with gunfire, and a witness said the darkness made it impossible to determine who fired first. The Palestinian Red Crescent said its crews treated a man with a critical abdominal wound and later two more casualties, one of whom required cardiopulmonary resuscitation en route to hospital. Local sources reported that Israeli forces fired at an ambulance.

The incident is the latest in a surge of settler attacks across the occupied West Bank that Palestinian officials and human rights monitors describe as systematic and often carried out with the direct support or passive cover of Israeli security forces. In the same 24-hour period, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported settler assaults in multiple governorates, including the beating of an elderly man in Surif, the release of cattle onto farmland near Yatta and Bethlehem, and military raids and arrests in Qalqilya and Jenin. Viewed from Ramallah, the Deir Jarir killings are part of an accelerating campaign to displace Palestinian communities and expand settlement outposts, a dynamic that analysts in the region link to the political strength of right-wing factions within the Israeli government.

Since October 2023, Palestinian official data record 1,181 Palestinians killed and some 13,000 wounded in the West Bank, alongside nearly 24,000 arrests. The Israeli military has repeatedly stated that its operations target armed militants and are necessary to prevent attacks on Israeli civilians. No new diplomatic or legal initiative was announced in the immediate aftermath of the Deir Jarir incident, but the rising death toll has drawn repeated expressions of concern from European and Arab capitals, as well as from United Nations agencies, over what they describe as an erosion of protections for civilians under international law.