Vulnerable People Project Condemns the Shooting of a 10-Year-Old and a 15-Year-Old With Live Ammunition and Warns That Children Are Now Routinely in the Line of Fire
NEWS PROVIDED BY
The Vulnerable People Project
Aug. 1, 2026
WEST BANK, Aug. 1, 2026 /Standard Newswire/ — Two Palestinian children were shot and wounded with live ammunition in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank on Friday — a 10-year-old boy shot in the back during a settler attack near Ramallah, and a 15-year-old boy shot in the foot during an Israeli military raid south of Bethlehem. The Vulnerable People Project(VPP) strongly condemns both shootings and warns that Palestinian children are increasingly the ones paying the price for the violence sweeping the West Bank.
In the central West Bank, a 10-year-old boy was shot in the back during an attack on the village of Al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah. According to local sources, a group of settlers attacked a sheep farm west of the village and opened live fire, striking the child. Footage circulated by Palestinian media appears to show a mother and her three young children fleeing as shots are fired from a distance, one of the children clutching an arm after apparently being hit. The shooting came on the same day that settlers announced “memorial hikes” near Al-Mughayyir for a settler killed in a confrontation the previous week — and it fits a grim pattern in a village that has become one of the most frequently attacked in the West Bank, where a 14-year-old boy, Aws al-Naasan, was shot dead outside his school in April and where residents say assaults now occur on a near-daily basis. While Palestinian sources attribute Friday’s shooting to settlers, the identity of the gunman has not yet been fully established, and the Israeli military had not commented at the time of publication.
In a separate incident later that night, a 15-year-old boy was shot in the foot with live ammunition during an Israeli military raid on the town of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem. Local sources reported that Israeli forces entered the town and deployed in its Al-Muthallath, or “Triangle,” area, where soldiers opened live fire, wounding the child.
“In one night, two more children were shot with live rounds — a ten-year-old hit in the back as his mother tried to carry him and his siblings to safety, and a teenager wounded in his own town,” said Jason Jones, founder of the Vulnerable People Project. “There is no version of protecting anyone that involves firing live ammunition at a child running away. Whether the trigger is pulled by a settler on a hillside or a soldier in a town, the result is the same: Palestinian children are being shot, and almost no one is being held to account. A society that has grown used to the sound of gunfire around its children has already lost something it cannot afford to lose.”
The two shootings, hours apart and in different governorates, underscore the danger now facing Palestinian children across the occupied West Bank — from settler assaults on agricultural land near Ramallah to military raids in populated towns near Bethlehem. They come amid a sharp territory-wide escalation in settler and military violence in recent weeks, during which entire villages have been placed under closure, homes seized, and civilians killed. United Nations figures indicate that dozens of Palestinians, including a rising number of children, have been killed in the West Bank since the start of 2026, with accountability for such killings remaining rare.
The Vulnerable People Project calls on the international community, the United Nations, and diplomatic missions to demand independent investigations into both shootings, genuine accountability for the use of live fire against children, and urgent protective measures for Palestinian civilian communities — Christian and Muslim alike — across the occupied West Bank. When children are being shot in the back, silence is not neutrality; it is permission.
For more information about the Vulnerable People Project and its mission to Save West Bank Christians, please visit SaveWestBankChristians.com.
PRESS CONTACT: Lex Pouliot, lex@thegreatcampaign.org or 970-342-4418
ABOUT JASON JONES & THE VULNERABLE PEOPLE PROJECT:
Jason Jones is a film producer, author, activist, and human rights worker. He is president of Movie to Movement, the Human Rights Education Organization (H.E.R.O.) and founder of the Vulnerable People Project. The Vulnerable People Project advocates for persecuted communities around the world, with a focus on exposing human rights abuses and supporting vulnerable individuals regardless of faith or background.
SOURCE Vulnerable People Project