Two Palestinians killed as settlers, Israeli forces raid West Bank village
Teenagers killed in settlers’ attack on al-Mughayyir as West Bank pogrom continues.
Two Palestinian teenagers have been killed in a pogrom by settlers and Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
The killings occurred during a raid in al-Mughayyir on Wednesday. The village has been the site of repeated pogroms by Israeli settlers and forces in recent months.
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The Palestinian Wafa news agency, quoting the head of the village council, identified the victims as Mohammad Nassan and Khalil Abu Aliya, both 19 years old.
As residents tried to confront the settlers, Israeli soldiers opened fire on the residents, critically wounding two young men, he said. They later died from their wounds.
Sources from the village told Al Jazeera that snipers had taken positions on rooftops in the village before the killings.
Since the beginning of 2026, at least 79 Palestinians, including 19 children, have been killed in the occupied West Bank by settlers or Israeli forces, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
At least 1,870 Palestinians have been wounded.
Pogroms in al-Mughayyir have largely focused on the village’s only access road, where vehicles have regularly been targeted, according to OCHA.
In an attack on August 20, 11 Palestinians were wounded.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters into a mosque in Madama, leaving those gathered coughing for air, according to footage verified by Al Jazeera.
Hours earlier, Israeli settlers tried to set fire to another mosque in the nearby town of Bazariya.
The surging pogroms, often supported by Israeli forces, have roiled Israel’s allies.
Last month, a three-week settler siege of a Palestinian home in Qusra, south of Nablus, prompted a rare rebuke from the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Israel and its illegal settlements.
The European Union, meanwhile, has been weighing a ban on settler-made goods.
In late August, the UN deputy special coordinator for the Middle East process, Ramiz Alakbarov, said settler attacks have continued with “virtually no accountability”.
Experts, including UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese, have increasingly said the attacks fit the definition of pogroms, or organised and often state-backed attacks on a targeted minority.