A Gaza father recounts how Israeli soldiers killed his three-year-old son in his arms and mocked him
Rayyan Abu al-Ajeen, 3, who was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers with a bullet to the head while in his father’s arms on 14 June 2026
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 18 June 2026 :
On the evening of June 14, the Israeli army shot and killed three-year-old* Rayyan Abu al-Ajeen in his father’s arms.
Bahaa Abu al-Ajeen, the boy’s father, set out that evening with his son, alongside his friend and relative, Khaled Abu Ghrab, to check on farmland they owned in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. While they were in what they described as a safe area, far from the so-called “Yellow Line” dividing Gaza into two, the two men and the child were surprised by an Israeli force hiding inside a Palestinian house within the designated safe zone. When they approached the house, the soldiers suddenly emerged and surrounded them, Baha Abu al-Ajeen said.
“If we had known there were Israeli soldiers there, we would never have gone,” he told Mondoweiss. “We were walking inside a safe area and heading to another location in the same zone. We had no idea soldiers were hiding there.”
Speaking from a hospital bed at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in video testimony for Mondoweiss, Abu al-Ajeen recalled that when the soldiers confronted them, his relative told him to sit on the ground. “We sat down to show them that we were unarmed and posed no threat. We regularly use this road inside the safe zone. Then my son started crying loudly out of fear. He had never experienced anything like that before,” he said.
Abu al-Ajeen said he then picked up his son and moved about 50 meters back to calm him down. “As I began walking, the soldiers shouted at me to stop and fired beneath my feet. I stopped immediately. And the moment I stopped, two soldiers pointed their guns at us, and one of them shot my son while he was in my arms. The bullet entered the back of his head and exited through his left eye while he was in my embrace. Then they shot me in the leg.”