Israel is accused of having targeted a group of Palestinian civilians with no links to armed groups and who posed no threat to Israeli forces, according to witnesses in the occupied West Bank.

Seven men - four of them brothers - were killed in an Israeli air strike early on 7 January, as they sat around a fire next to the road through al-Shuhada village, 10km (six miles) from the city of Jenin.

The BBC has spoken to relatives of the men killed, witnesses in the area at the time, and a paramedic at the scene. All provided strong evidence that the men were not members of armed militant groups, and that no clashes with Israeli forces were taking place in the location at the time.

Khalid al-Ahmad, the first paramedic to arrive that morning, is convinced the men were doing nothing wrong.

"One of them was wearing slippers and pyjamas," he told the BBC. "Don't you think that someone who wants to resist [the Israeli occupation] would at least wear proper shoes?"

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has linked the strike to a military operation hours earlier in Jenin refugee camp, in which a female soldier was killed.

The IDF directed us to a statement it released at the time, which said that "during the operation, an aircraft struck a terrorist squad that hurled explosives at the forces operating in the area".

Footage from both the IDF and a nearby CCTV camera does not show any clear evidence of confrontations with Palestinians in al-Shuhada at the time of the strike.

The four brothers - Alaa, Hazza, Ahmad, and Rami Darweesh - were aged between 22 and 29 years old. They were Palestinian emigrants who had returned from Jordan a few years earlier with their mother and five siblings.

They had Israeli permits, allowing them to cross into Israel for agricultural work each day. These permits are often difficult to obtain and are rapidly withdrawn from anyone Israel sees as a security threat - or as linked to someone who is.

The three men killed with them were members of their extended family.

Permits for two of the brothers, seen by the BBC, were issued in September 2023 and valid for several months. The borders with Israel have been closed to Palestinian workers since the Hamas attacks in October.

The paramedic, Khalid al-Ahmad, said that after 20 years working in Jenin, he was used to scanning trauma sites for weapons or explosives, as a basic safety routine.

"I would tell you if there were weapons there," he said. "Honestly, these were civilians. There was nothing relating to the resistance - no bullets, no weapons. And there was no Israeli presence at all."

Armed Palestinian groups - usually quick to claim any members killed by Israeli forces - have been silent about these seven men, with no statement describing any of them as "martyrs" for their cause.

At their funeral, their bodies were wrapped in the flags of Palestinian groups, including Hamas. The bodies of those killed by Israel are often wrapped in the flags of movements supported by friends or family members - even when the deceased are not supporters themselves.

Relatives and neighbours all told us the men had no connection with militant groups - as did the head of Jenin's main hospital, Wissam Bakr, where the bodies were brought that morning.

(Source: BBC)