Hamza and Reda Bsharat, cousins aged 10 and 8, were killed in an airstrike in the West Bank on Wednesday. The family says the army then proceeded to ransack their home. ‘These are children, what explosives are they talking about?’

It happened on Wednesday morning. Hamza and Reda Bsharat, cousins aged ten and eight, were sitting outside their home in the West Bank village of Tamoun, near Nablus.
“They were getting ready to go to school,” says Amar, Hamza’s father, who said they were in the house’s yard. But for them, the school day never started.
The two children were killed in an IDF drone strike. Another cousin, Adam Adin Ahmed Bsharat, 23, was killed beside them. The army claims that the strike was targeting what they identified as a squad that was laying improvised explosives.
“These are children aged eight and ten. What explosives are they talking about?” wondered Amar. Haaretz also asked the army whether it still stands behind its initial statement, but it declined to respond.
The family’s suffering did not end with the strike. “The army entered the house,” says Amar. “The soldiers broke everything, beat a paramedic, and prevented him from getting close.” He says they even drove the mothers away, aiming their weapons at them. “My son was in his mother’s arms, and they took him, pointed a rifle at her and said, ‘Go into the house.'”


Amar says that soldiers also entered the family’s houses, all located next to each other, leaving chaos behind them. “They also entered my brother’s house and broke things there, and entered my 70-year old mother’s house, ransacked it and told her not to move.”
He says that, at that point, the soldiers wrapped the children’s bodies in blankets and took them away. Only after several hours, at around 5 P.M., were the bodies returned to the mourning families. “If there was a problem with the children, they wouldn’t give us their bodies,” says Amar in anger.
He says that army representatives told him that the strike was a mistake, in their words. “But that doesn’t help me,” he says. “This is my son, who was born after ten years of marriage by IVF, and now the army comes and tells me that it is sorry.”
Amar made it clear that the army looked into him and the rest of the family and found nothing. “Not me, not my son, and no one from the family – we have no problem with anyone. We have no relative in jail and no shahid,” he said.
He adds that he, his brother, and nephew, Adam, who was killed in the strike, work in West Bank settlements in the Jordan Valley. “I was at work in the Naama settlement when this happened, and my brother was at Petza’el,” he said.

Tamoun Mayor Naji Bani Odeh told Haaretz that the strike has caused anger and anxiety among residents. “Everyone is scared, making sure that their children won’t go onto the balcony or roof. Everyone was surprised. No one knows why this happened. “
He adds that this was not the first air strike in the village. “They bombed Tamoun the day before,” he says. “But that was at night, on the street, and not in their house. They were adults, not minors.”
The cousins were killed on Wednesday were not the first innocents killed by recent IDF air strikes in the West Bank. In late December, a drone strike killed two women in the Tul Karm refugee camp. They were killed in their homes.

An IDF internal probe claimed that the strike was targeting gunmen, and that a rare malfunction occurred during the strike that resulted in the women’s deaths.
“The incident was investigated, findings will be examined, and the lessons learned. The IDF regrets any harm to those uninvolved,” an official statement read.