Armed Israeli settlers shot dead two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Monday. This happened only hours after Israeli forces killed a Palestinian teen during a military raid, officials said.
Monday’s violence brought to eight the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or armed settlers since Friday. Palestinian authorities reported increased settler rampages across the West Bank.
Salah Bani Jaber, mayor of Aqraba, a town near the northern city of Nablus, witnessed Monday’s settler attack. He told that some 50 settlers, many of them armed, attacked members of his community and fired at Palestinian youth, killing two of them and wounding others.
“There were Israeli soldiers at the scene who stood idly by watching the settlers,” he said.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said soldiers blocked its ambulances from reaching the area and tending to the wounded.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident in West Bank.
IDF raid Nablus in West Bank
Earlier on Monday, Israeli forces raided Nablus, killing 17-year-old Yazan Ishtayeh and wounding three other people, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
A spokesperson for Israel’s Border Police said that undercover border police officers together with Israeli soldiers launched an operation in Nablus to arrest a suspect.
During the activity, there was rioting in which one person threw an explosive device at the troops. He was shot dead by the undercover unit, the spokesperson said.
Over the weekend, hundreds of armed Jewish settlers raided Palestinian villages near the city of Ramallah, blocking roads, setting houses and cars ablaze, and firing at civilians, medics and civilians said.
Israeli authorities said the escalation began after a 14-year-old Israeli went missing in the West Bank. His body was discovered on Saturday in what Israel said was a suspected militant attack.
The U.S. State Department condemned the killing of the Israeli teen and also said it was increasingly concerned by violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
