RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Mourners carried the body of a teenager killed by Israel’s military through the hills of the West Bank ’s largest city on Thursday, the latest victim in a surge of violence this month.
Ibrahim Al-Khayyat died after being shot and wounded in his chest and abdomen in Hebron, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Ministry of Health and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Relatives told The Associated Press he was heading to a minimarket when he was shot on Wednesday.
Israel’s military said soldiers had fired on Palestinians during an operation in Hebron after Palestinians hurled rocks toward them.
Mumtaz Shabaneh, al-Khayyat’s schoolteacher, said the killing reflected a wider pattern of violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, describing it as an attempt “to break our will and undermine our perseverance to remain steadfast on this land.”
Al-Khayyat was the second Palestinian to be killed on Wednesday. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Abdulhalim Hamad died during an Israeli raid in Silwad, northeast of Ramallah. WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, reported Hammad, 37, was killed at home by Israeli soldiers.
The two deaths add to the more than 40 Palestinians to have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the occupied West Bank so far this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Teenagers have borne a large share of the violence, with three killed last week.
A drone strike hit Gaza City, killing three people, according to health officials at Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the strike.
While large-scale fighting across the enclave has eased since a shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in October, Israel has carried out near-daily strikes across Gaza, where more than 820 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures from Gaza Health Ministry. Part of the Hamas-led government, the ministry maintains casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. But it does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.
Associated Press writers Toqa Ezzidin in Cairo and Koral Saeed in Abu Snan, Israel, contributed to this report.
Displaced Palestinians gather to collect water from a truck at a makeshift tent camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Samah Abu Daqqa, 33, carries jerrycans filled with water through a tent camp in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Displaced Palestinian Reem Abu Lahia uses water to do laundry inside the tent where she lives in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration is appealing a judge's order as it tries to cut the number of vaccines recommended for every child in the United States.
The appeal filed Wednesday was a delayed response to a March 16 court order that blocked the decision by President Donald Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, to end broad recommendations for all children to be vaccinated against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV, a respiratory virus.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy's order also stopped a meeting of a Kennedy-appointed vaccine advisory committee.
The stay continues while the appeal is considered.
The government's one-sentence filing did not say why the block should be lifted. U.S. health officials did not immediately comment on the filing, or respond to a question about why they waited six weeks to file an appeal.
The appeal is the latest development in a lawsuit filed in July by the American Academy of Pediatrics and some other medical groups. The lawsuit in federal court in Boston originally focused on Kennedy’s decision to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccinations for most children and pregnant women.
The lawsuit was updated as Kennedy took more steps that alarmed medical societies, causing the plaintiffs to ask Murphy to take steps to address those policy changes too.
For example, the plaintiffs amended the lawsuit to stop the scaling back of the nation’s childhood vaccination schedule. They also asked the court to look at Kennedy’s actions concerning the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises public health officials on what vaccines to recommend to doctors and patients.
Kennedy, a leading anti-vaccine activist before becoming the nation’s top health official, fired the entire 17-member panel last year and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices.
Murphy, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden, said Kennedy’s reconstitution of ACIP likely violated federal law. The judge ordered the appointments — and all decisions made by the reformulated committee — put on hold.
Earlier this month, the Republican administration updated the committee's charter to broadens qualifications for panel members in ways that would allow the inclusion of Kennedy allies. That move did not resolve the legal challenge, according to Richard Hughes IV, a lawyer representing the pediatrics group.
Hughes this week said he was disappointed that the government decided to appeal but said he expected to prevail. He pledged to bring an end to Kennedy's “steady destruction of vaccine policy and public health.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attends an event on health care affordability in the Oval Office at the White House, Thursday, April 23, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
