Palestinians mourn third teenager killed in occupied West Bank this week

Mourners wave Palestinian and Fatah flags during the funeral of Awda Awawdeh, who was killed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank town of Deir Dibwan Thursday, April 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

TELL, West Bank — Three Palestinian teenagers have been killed in the occupied West Bank this week in a spike of renewed violence, the latest shot dead by Israeli forces during a mid-week raid.

Palestinians in the northern West Bank village of Tell mourned the death of Youssef Shtayyeh on Friday after health officials said he was gunned down by Israeli forces in the nearby city of Nablus.

Waving Palestinian flags and carrying the 15-year-old’s sheathed body down through the village streets, his relatives and neighbors moved in a tide of grief and recited religious verses in unison.

Israel’s military acknowledged the fatality and said that its forces had fired after attempting to arrest a Palestinian who they said had hurled rocks toward them. They did not say why they were operating in Nablus, the West Bank’s second largest city, which is governed by the Palestinian Authority.

Shtayyeh is at least the fourth Palestinian killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers this week, following shootings across the West Bank, in Hebron, al-Mughayyir and Deir Dibwan.

Palestinians, rights groups and international observers are increasingly warning about the worsening violence, where young Palestinian men are being killed with increasing regularity amid a broader climate of arson, vandalism and the displacement of farming communities near settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank.

Ramallah Mayor Leila Ghannam said at one of this week’s funerals that the onslaught of violence suggested broader impunity in the Palestinian territory. Israeli “settlers and the army are one and the same,” she said.

At least 40 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, including a record 11 by settlers, two more than in all of 2025.

Aref Tufaha and Imad Isseid, The Associated Press