Pregnant woman shot dead as Israel shifts operations to potential ‘new front’ for Iran

Kafr al-Labad, West Bank: The call came in the middle of the night, Mohammed Shula said. His daughter-in-law, eight months pregnant with her first child, was whispering. There was panic in her voice.

“Help, please,” Shula recalled Sondos Shalabi saying. “You have to save us.”

Mohammed Shula displays a picture on his phone of himself, centre, with his sons Bilal and Yazan.Credit: AP

Minutes later, she was fatally shot.

Shalabi and her husband, Yazan Shula, 26, had fled their home in the early hours of Sunday as Israeli security forces closed in on Nur Shams refugee camp, a crowded urban district in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.

Israeli military vehicles had surrounded the camp days earlier, part of a larger crackdown on Palestinian militants across the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that has escalated since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza took effect last month. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has announced the expansion of the army’s operations, saying its aim is to stop Iran — Hamas’ ally — from opening up a new front in the occupied territory.

Palestinians see the shooting of Shalabi, 23, as part of a worrying trend toward more lethal, warlike Israeli tactics in the West Bank. The Israeli army issued a short statement afterwards, saying it had referred her shooting to the military police for criminal investigation.

Mohammed Shula poses for a photo inside a relative’s house where he and his wife have taken refuge in the West Bank.Credit: AP

Also on Sunday, just a few streets away, another young Palestinian woman, 21, was killed by the Israeli army. An explosive device it had planted detonated as she approached her front door.

In response, the Israeli army said that a wanted militant had been in her house, compelling Israeli forces to break down the door. It said the woman had not left despite the soldiers’ calls. The army said it “regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians”.

Across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, at least 905 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war in Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry says. Many appear to have been militants killed in gun battles during Israeli raids. But rock-throwing protesters and uninvolved civilians – including a two-year-old girl – have also been killed.

“The basic rules of fighting, of confronting the Palestinians, are different now,” said Maher Kanan, a member of the emergency response team in nearby Anabta, describing what he sees as the army’s new attitude and tactics. “The displacement, the number of civilians killed, they are doing here what they did in Gaza.”

Residents of the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, Tulkarem, evacuate their homes this week.Credit: AP

Mohammed Shula, 58, said the looming due date for his unborn grandchild had prompted his son and daughter-in-law to plan their flight from Nur Shams last week, as Israeli drones crisscrossed the sky and Palestinian militants booby-trapped the roads.

His son “was worried about [Shalabi] all the time. He knew that she wouldn’t be able to deliver the baby if the siege got worse,” he said.

“This baby is what they were living for.”

Early on Sunday, the couple left for the home of Shalabi’s parents outside the camp, in Tulkarem, where soldiers weren’t operating. It was safer there, and near the hospital for the baby’s birth. Yazan Shula’s brother, 19-year-old Bilal, also wanted to get out and jumped in the back seat.

Smoke rises during an Israeli army operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams this week.Credit: AP

Not long after they drove off, there was a burst of gunfire. Mohammed Shula’s phone rang.

His daughter-in-law’s breaths came in gasps, he said. An Israeli sniper had shot her husband, she told her father-in-law, and blood was flowing from the back of his head. She was unscathed, but had no idea what to do.

He talked her, trying to keep her calm. He told her to knock on the door of any house to ask for help. Her phone on speaker, he could hear her knocking and shrieking, he said. No one was answering. She told him she could see soldiers approaching. The line went dead. Mohammed Shula then called the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service.

“We couldn’t go outside because we were afraid we’d be shot,” Shula family neighbour Suleiman Zuheiri, 65, said. He was helping the medics reach their bodies. “We tried and tried. All in vain. [The medics] kept getting turned back, and the girl kept bleeding.”

Israeli soldiers check the IDs of Palestinians in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams.Credit: AP

Bilal Shula wasn’t hurt. He was arrested at the scene and detained for several hours.

The Red Crescent said that the International Committee of the Red Cross had secured approval from the Israeli military to allow medics inside the camp. But the paramedics were detained twice, for half an hour each time.

When asked why soldiers had blocked ambulances, the Israeli military repeated that it had launched an investigation into the events surrounding Shalabi’s killing.

The medics were detained a third time while rushing the husband out of the camp to the hospital, the Red Crescent said.

Yazan Shula was unconscious and in a critical condition as of Wednesday AEDT. Shalabi was found dead. Her foetus also did not survive.

Mohammed Shula keeps thinking about how soldiers saw Shalabi’s body bleeding on the ground and did nothing to help as they handcuffed his other son.

“Why did they shoot them? They were doing nothing wrong. They could have stopped them, asked a question, but no, they just shot,” he said, his fingers busily rubbing a string of prayer beads.

Israeli security forces invaded the camp hours later. Explosions resounded through the alleyways. Armoured bulldozers rumbled down the roads, chewing up the pavement and rupturing underground water pipes. The electricity went out. Then the taps ran dry.

Before Mohammed Shula could process what was happening, he said, Israeli troops had banged on his front door and ordered everyone – his daughter, son and several grandchildren – to leave their home.

The Israeli military denied it was carrying out forcible evacuations in the West Bank, saying it was facilitating the departure of civilians who wanted to leave. It did not respond to follow-up questions about why more than a dozen Palestinian civilians interviewed in Nur Shams camp had made the same claims about their forcible displacement.

Mohammed Shula pointed to a bag of baby nappies in the corner of his friend’s living room. That’s all he had time to bring, he said.

AP

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