17-year-old Ahmad Khalil Ahmad Rajabi was shot and killed by Israeli forces. Photo: Courtesy of the Rajabi family.
Ramallah, December 10, 2025—Israeli forces killed a 17-year-old Palestinian boy in the southern occupied West Bank last week.
Ahmad Khalil Ahmad Rajabi, 17, was killed by Israeli forces on December 6 around 9 p.m. in Hebron city in the southern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Ahmad was driving his family’s car to visit a friend at Alia Governmental Hospital in the city center, during which Israeli forces allege that Ahmad attempted to run over a soldier. Israeli forces opened fire on the vehicle, killing Ahmad.
“There is no rule of law for Palestinian children,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “ Palestinian families are left to piece together how their child was killed, and in many cases are denied even the basic dignity of burying them, as Israel continues to withhold children’s bodies in violation of international law.”
Ahmad left Alia Governmental Hospital, planning to continue along Beersheba Street and then head to the Old City. As he drove down Wadi al-Tuffah Street and arrived at the checkpoint on Shuhada Street, he saw soldiers stationed across from it. The soldiers were standing in the right lane, while Ahmad was driving in the left.
The soldiers yelled at Ahmad to stop when he was beside them in the second lane. The vehicle moved past the soldiers for several meters before Ahmad halted and backed up no more than five meters, when the soldiers immediately began shooting at the car, causing the car to slide. One of the soldiers attempted to open the driver’s door, and as the car skidded, the front driver’s side hit him. He then joined the other five soldiers in shooting at the vehicle.
The car kept slowly reversing, swerving slightly downhill until its rear faced Wadi al-Tuffah Street. At that point, an older man, a sanitation worker in the Hebron municipality, was hit by the barrage of bullets fired toward the car. The vehicle eventually stopped in the middle of the road, where the soldiers continued to fire at the car, killing Ahmad.
An ambulance arrived, but soldiers fired toward it, preventing it from reaching either Ahmad in the car or the injured sanitation worker.
A large number of Israeli army and police units arrived later. At first, the Israeli military stated that a speeding vehicle had opened fire on soldiers in the Bab al-Zawiya area. They later withdrew that claim and issued a new one, claiming instead that the soldiers had shot at a car that attempted to run them over.
Ahmad’s father arrived in the Bab al-Zawiya area after seeing a photo of the car circulating on social media. He spoke with the officers, who attempted to justify the shooting by alleging that his son had tried to run over a soldier. The father refuted their claim, explaining that his son had simply been visiting a patient at the hospital and was on his way home. The officers then forced him to leave the area without allowing him to view his son’s body. The soldiers seized the vehicle and most of the nearby shops’ cameras, and took Ahmad’s body and transported it in a military ambulance to an unknown location.
Due to the confiscation of Ahmad’s body, DCIP is not able to verify the location or number of bullet wounds that he sustained.
Israeli forces and settlers have killed 53 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank in 2025, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Israeli forces have withheld the bodies of at least 61 Palestinian children since June 2016, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Six of the children’s bodies have since been released to their families, while 55 Palestinian children’s bodies remain withheld by Israeli authorities. Israel’s practice of withholding Palestinian bodies is a form of collective punishment, a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, and deprives Palestinian families of the ability to lay their children to rest.
In September 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court approved the practice of confiscating human remains after several legal challenges to the policy. On November 27, 2019, Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett ordered all bodies of Palestinians alleged to have attacked Israeli citizens or soldiers to be withheld and not returned to their families.