The small shrouded body of Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, was carried to the graveyard in Hebron by his father on Saturday – a day after the seven-month-old was shot dead by an Israeli soldier while sitting in his mother's arms.
His father, Fahd Abu Haikal, a lecturer at Bethlehem University, walked at the head of a group of mourners, holding his son for the last time. Sam turned seven months old on Friday, the day he was killed.
“Seven-month-old Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was buried in Hebron after Israeli troops opened fire on his family's car.”
The shooting happened on Friday evening in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron, a flashpoint where Israeli settlers live among Palestinian residents under heavy military protection. Fahd was driving his family home from a day out in Bethlehem when they approached their neighbourhood.
According to the family, soldiers signalled for them to stop. Fahd brought the car to a complete halt and raised his hands on the steering wheel. “Immediately afterwards, they opened fire on the vehicle,” he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
“The bullet penetrated the front windshield, went through my arm, and then struck my son in the head and my wife in the face,” Fahd said. Sam was critically injured and evacuated to hospital, where he later died. His mother is still being treated.
The Israel Defense Forces said its troops “perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them” and a soldier fired “single shots”. The army acknowledged that the family were “uninvolved civilians” and expressed “deep sorrow” over the incident, adding that the shooting is under review.
Fahd rejected that account. “The soldier was about 10 metres away from me. He saw me, he saw my wife and the children,” he told Haaretz. “The car windows were not dark, it was daylight and everything was clear. You can’t say he didn’t see that it was a family.”
He dismissed the military’s expression of regret. “When more than one bullet is fired, when there’s no warning shot and no warning at all, it can’t be a mistake!” he said.
Local residents pointed out traces of what they said was blood on the road at the spot where the shooting occurred. One resident, who did not want to be named, said he heard just two shots and saw around four soldiers at the scene.
Fahd has called for an investigation and accountability. “I demand and expect, if there is any conscience, any law, any morality, that the soldier who shot will be held accountable for his actions,” he told Haaretz. “This case must not be closed without an investigation and without accountability.”
The killing comes amid heightened Israeli military activity across the West Bank since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the outbreak of the war, according to the United Nations.