GAZA, Palestine
Dozens of Israeli settlers have set fire to houses and cars in a village in the occupied West Bank, with the Palestinian health ministry saying at least one person has been killed.
The settlers - some of them
wearing masks - threw rocks and Molotov cocktails as they attacked the village
of Jit, near the town of Nablus, on Thursday evening, the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) said.
The Palestinian health
ministry said a local villager in his early 20s was killed and another person
critically injured in the chest. The IDF said it was examining the report of
the fatality.
Israeli political leaders
condemned the attack, pledging to punish the perpetrators. One Israeli national
was detained in Jit, the IDF said.
Footage has emerged on social
media purportedly showing houses and vehicles set ablaze in Jit late on
Thursday.
Plumes of smoke are seen
rising above the village.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement that "those responsible
for any criminal act will be caught and prosecuted".
Israeli President Isaac Herzog
wrote in a post on X: "This is an extreme minority that harms the
law-abiding community of settlers and the settlement as a whole and in the name
and status of Israel in the world during a particularly sensitive and difficult
period.
"Law enforcement
officials must act immediately" to bring those responsible to justice, Mr
Herzog added.
In a statement, the IDF said
its forces were deployed in the village "within minutes" of receiving
reports of violence, shooting in the air to disperse the crowds. Attackers were
then removed from Jit.
The IDF added that a joint
investigation was launched by its forces, Israel's security agency Shin Bet and
the Israeli police following the "serious incident".
The US said attacks by
settlers were "unacceptable and must stop".
"Israeli authorities must
take measures to protect all communities from harm, this includes intervening
to stop such violence, and holding all perpetrators of such violence to
account," a White House National Security Council spokesperson said.
Palestinians regularly accuse
Israeli security forces of allowing groups of violent settlers to attack their
villages.
According to OCHA - the UN
office for Humanitarian Affairs - there have been more than 1,000 attacks by settlers against
Palestinians since October, with at least 1,390 people - including 660
children - displaced.
Lethal violence has frequently
accompanied the attacks. OCHA recorded 107 that led to Palestinian fatalities
and injuries, 859 causing damage to Palestinian property.
International attention has
been focused on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip - but the scale
of settler violence has prompted the US, the EU and the UK to impose sanctions
on some settler leaders and, for the first time, against entire settler
outposts.
No comments:
Post a Comment