A seven-month-old Palestinian baby, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was killed when Israeli soldiers fired at his family's car in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood south of Hebron on June 5, 2026 [1, 2, 3, 4]. Sam's parents were also wounded; the father suffered grazes to his finger and arm, while the mother was hospitalized with facial wounds and a bullet fragment near her heart [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

The family said they complied with orders to stop and posed no threat. Sam’s father, Fahd Abu Haikal, said, "The soldier signalled me to stop. I brought the car to a complete halt and raised my hands on the steering wheel. Immediately afterwards, they opened fire on the vehicle" [5]. He rejected the military's claim that the car was accelerating toward soldiers.

The Israeli military initially said soldiers fired because they believed the vehicle was accelerating toward them and responded with single shots [1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 5, 7]. However, footage released by the human rights group B'Tselem late on June 10 shows the car slowing to a stop when the shots were fired, contradicting the military's account. B'Tselem said, "The footage clearly shows that the Israeli soldier fired at the car as it was slowing to a stop. The car was far from the soldiers and posed no danger to them whatsoever" [5].

An initial military inquiry found those injured to be uninvolved civilians and said the incident was under review [1, 2, 3, 4, 8]. On June 7, the Israeli military opened an official investigation conducted by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division [8].

Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was buried in Hebron on June 6, with family and local mourners attending the funeral [2, 4, 9]. The Tel Rumeida area is a known hotspot, where Israeli settlers live among Palestinians under military protection [3]. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and over 70,000 in Gaza by Israeli forces [1, 8, 7].

Fahd Abu Haikal criticized the military’s handling of the shooting, stating, "What happened to us is not a matter of an apology. What happened is not that shots were fired by mistake and led to this tragedy" [4].

The investigation by the Israeli military into the shooting continues, with no immediate conclusions released.