Israeli settlers torch West Bank village

A Palestinian man become once shot ineffective as dozens of Israeli settlers attacked a village in the north of the occupied West Bank in a single day, setting fire to homes and vehicles, Palestinian officials pronounce.

The settlers – some wearing masks – also threw rocks and Molotov cocktails in the village of Jit, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) acknowledged, adding that one become once arrested.

The Palestinian health ministry acknowledged Rashid Sedda, 22, become once killed by gunfire from the settlers and yet any other man become once severely wounded in what it condemned as an act of “organised relate terrorism”. The IDF acknowledged it become once having a explore into the experiences of a fatality.

Israel’s top minister acknowledged he viewed the incident with “utmost severity”.

It’s a ways the most up-to-the-minute in the series of attacks by extremist settlers on Palestinian villages in the West Bank, where there become once a spike in violence since Hamas’s lethal attack on Israel on 7 October and the following battle in Gaza.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews because it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land the Palestinians need as section of a future relate – in the 1967 Middle East battle.

The overwhelming majority of the global community considers the settlements unlawful beneath global law, regardless that Israel disputes this.

Pictures shared on social media confirmed vehicles and homes ablaze following the lethal rampage in Jit on Thursday night.

As he inspected the damage to his dwelling on Friday morning, Ibrahim al-Seda told the BBC he had been sitting exterior his dwelling with relatives after the sundown Maghrib prayer when he heard a atomize.

“We seemed out and saw seven, eight, most seemingly 10 settlers. Two vehicles had been relate on fire,” he acknowledged. “My childhood ran exterior, and we grabbed the hose to take a explore at to save out the fireside on the vehicles. However the water wasn’t adequate; we couldn’t extinguish the flames. Then they started throwing rocks from above.”

“The of us from town came to defend us and our neighbourhood. Then more settlers arrived, this time armed. They started taking pictures.”

He added: “Younger men who had been defending us from above the wall threw stones to give protection to themselves. We had been outnumbered. There had been potentially spherical 100 settlers by the destroy. The those that had been down beneath had to scamper away because they couldn’t stand in opposition to the gunfire.

“The settlers took regulate of the dwelling. They relate two more vehicles on fire and averted us from going exterior because they’d shoot someone who tried.”

Mr Seda acknowledged Israeli troopers arrived “about an hour later” and that they fired photos into the air but “didn’t intervene mighty at that level perfect to discontinuance what become once occurring”.

The Palestinian Crimson Crescent acknowledged its medics had handled a Palestinian villager who become once shot in the chest and rushed him to the Rafida Authorities Hospital in the nearby city of Nablus, where his condition become once described as excessive, in conserving with Palestinian info agency Wafa. Rashid Sedda’s physique become once also taken there.

In an announcement, the IDF acknowledged its forces and Border Police officers had been despatched to the village “within minutes” of receiving experiences of violence. They fired into the air to disperse the crowds and “take away[d] the Israeli civilians”, it added. One particular person become once arrested and transferred to the police for questioning, it added.

The IDF acknowledged it had opened a joint investigation with the Shin Bet home security service and the police following what it known as “this excessive incident”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s relate of job acknowledged in an announcement that he took “severely the riots that took relate this evening” and promised that “those guilty for any criminal act shall be caught and prosecuted”.

President Isaac Herzog wrote in a post on X: “That is an monstrous minority that harms the law-abiding community of settlers and the settlement as a entire and in the establish and plight of Israel on this planet at some level of a in particular sensitive and engaging duration.

The US, Israel’s main ally, also issued a condemnation, announcing that such attacks on Palestinian civilians had been “unacceptable and must discontinuance”.

“Israeli authorities must take measures to give protection to all communities from injure, this entails intervening to discontinuance such violence, and keeping all perpetrators of such violence to story,” a Nationwide Security Council spokesperson acknowledged.

Palestinian analyst and aged Palestinian Authority spokeswoman Nour Odeh told the BBC that such attacks came about “on a on each day basis basis”.

“These condemnations [by Israeli leaders] are viewed as performative by the Palestinian public, because the music file is [that] the investigations poke nowhere, no one is prosecuted, no one is held to story, and these settlers can count on the corpulent red meat up of contributors of the federal government to give protection to them.”

The UN acknowledged on Wednesday that it had recorded spherical 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers in opposition to Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 7 October. About 120 of those attacks led to of us being killed or injured, and 1,000 led to property damage.

It also acknowledged a entire of 594 Palestinians – contributors of armed groups, attackers and civilians – had been killed in warfare-linked incidents at some level of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, over the equal duration. At the least 577 had been killed by Israeli forces and 10 by settlers, it added.

Fifteen Israelis, including 9 security forces personnel and five settlers, had been also killed by Palestinians in the West Bank, while yet any other 10 Israelis had been killed in attacks in Israel by Palestinians from the West Bank, in conserving with the UN.