Diaa 'Omar Ahmad Saba’aneh, 15 – Qabatiya, Jenin District, 1 February 2025

On 1 February 2025, during Operation Iron Wall in the northern West Bank, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a vehicle carrying two young men in the town of Qabatiya. Both were killed instantly. The blast also injured Diaa Saba’aneh, 15, who was sitting in a car outside his family's store nearby. His father, who was in another family vehicle not far from his son, was also wounded by shrapnel. Diaa and his father were taken to the hospital, where Diaa died of his wounds two and a half weeks, on 17 February 2025.

B'Tselem field researcher Abdulkarim Sadi collected testimonies.

Y.N., 75, a resident of Qabatiya and father of six, said on 20 March 2025:

On 1 February 2025, I was at my business near the girls’ schools. At around 8:45 A.M., I heard a loud explosion out front.

I went outside to see what was happening on the main road across from me, and I saw a private car on fire. There was shrapnel littered all around it. Dozens of fragments had penetrated the iron gate of a nearby house.

There were two young men in the car that was hit and burning up. They were killed, and both their bodies were torn apart. After people started gathering at the scene, we learned that they were Saleh Zakarneh and 'Abd al-Hadi Kmeil, both from Qabatiya.

Diaa Saba’aneh was sitting in his family's car across the street, in front of his mother's store. He was hit in the head by shrapnel, and his father was also injured, even though at the time of the explosion he was sitting in another vehicle across the street, which is more than 15 meters wide.

Residents took both of them to the town's medical center. The remains of the two young men who were killed in the missile strike were also taken there.

Seventeen days later, the boy died of his wounds.

The missile also caused extensive property damage and shattered windows in nearby homes. The front of the Saba’aneh family's cosmetics store was blown apart and destroyed. Vehicles parked along the road were damaged as well.

Ahmad Saba’aneh, Diaa's father, 42, a father of four, said on 20 March 2025:

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On 1 February 2025, at around 8:45 A.M., I was on my way home from work in Tubas. I stopped outside my wife's store, which is called a-Diaa Cosmetics and Cleaning Supplies, to pick up the keys to our house. The store is on the southern side of town, near the girls' schools. I saw my son Diaa sitting in our other car next to the store. I was across the street.

I got a sudden shock when a missile fired by a drone hit a passing car on the road next to me, between my car and the one Diaa was sitting in.

I was stunned. The missile exploded less than a meter away from me, and I was hit by several pieces of shrapnel in my ear and face. Out of sheer fear and terror, as soon as I managed to get out of the car through the passenger-side door, I ran north.

I didn’t know what was happening because I was in shock. The vehicle that was hit came from the north and in it were two young men, Saleh Zakarneh and 'Abd al-Hadi Kmeil, who were killed by the missile. People gathered around their burning car, so I ran there as well to show them that I was injured. At that point, I didn't know my son who was in the car across the road was hit by shrapnel in the head.

Later, I went back to the store to check on my wife, and on my children who were there with her. That's when I noticed Diaa was unconscious inside the car. At first, we didn't realize he had been hit in the head. We thought he’d just blacked out from fear because of the missile explosion.

A relative took Diaa and me to a medical center in Qabatiya. We were examined and then transferred by ambulance to a-Razi Hospital in Jenin.

It turned out Diaa was hit by a fragment that penetrated the left side of his brain. After two days at a-Razi Hospital, he was transferred to the intensive care unit at Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin. The next day, on 17 February 2025, he died of his wounds.

I spent one night in the hospital. The doctors said they couldn’t remove the piece of shrapnel lodged near my ear because it was too close to the facial nerve, and that I would have to live with it. They said the other fragments would come out over time.

The front of our store was also damaged. I could have lost my entire family that day. I don't even want to imagine it.