9-year-old Israeli girl struck by apparent stray bullet in settlement near Ramallah

A 9-year-old Israeli girl was wounded Friday evening after being struck by a bullet in the West Bank settlement of Kochav Yaakov, according to the military and medics.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said the girl was walking down a street when she was hit by the bullet. She was first brought to a local medical clinic in light-to-moderate condition before MDA medics took her to a hospital in Jerusalem.

The military said the girl appeared to have been wounded by a stray bullet coming from the direction of a Palestinian town in the Ramallah area, north of Jerusalem.

The Israel Defense Forces was probing the matter.

The military’s Home Front Command briefly ordered residents of the community to remain in their homes and lock doors and windows, as troops carried out scans of the area.

A similar incident occurred in Kochav Yaakov last August.

In November 2022, a 13-year-old girl was critically hurt by a stray bullet in the southern West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba.

Friday’s incident came hours after a Palestinian man was shot and killed after infiltrating into the Teneh Omarim settlement and allegedly trying to stab an Israeli at the entrance to the community synagogue.

In a separate incident on Friday, a 12-year-old boy was badly injured by a hand grenade explosion in the Bedouin-majority town of Rahat in southern Israel. The circumstances of the blast were unclear.

First responders rushed the boy to a Beersheba hospital with stomach wounds and police opened an investigation.

In a third incident, a 5-year-old boy and a 26-year-old man were lightly to moderately injured by gunfire in the northern Arab Israeli city of Umm al Fahm.