UPDATES WITH MORE DETAILS, CHANGES HEADLINE
By Aysar Alais and Mohammad Sio
RAMALLAH, Palestine / ISTANBUL (AA) – At least 11 Palestinians were injured by Israeli army fire and attacks by illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank on Friday, medics said.
Two Palestinians were wounded when Israeli forces raided the town of Kafr Aqab, north of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a statement.
It said its teams “treated two people wounded by live bullets, one below the knee and another, a 17-year-old boy, in the foot, in an Israeli military raid in Kafr Aqab.”
Israeli police and army forces stormed the town, chased several youths, and fired live rounds and stun grenades, witnesses told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Witnesses said Israeli forces closed several roads during the raid and restricted the movement of residents and vehicles.
The raid came hours after Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man in the town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin, in the northern West Bank. On Thursday, a Palestinian child was also killed by Israeli fire while playing football in the village of Ar-Rihiya, south of Hebron.
- Settler violence
Separately, illegal Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in the central and northern West Bank on Friday, wounding four people.
Local sources said settlers assaulted farmers in the towns of Salem, Urif, Hawara, Qusra, Aqraba, and Qabalan, south and east of Nablus, and forcibly removed them from their fields, and prevented them from harvesting olives.
Illegal settlers also beat a Palestinian family in Qabalan while they were harvesting olives, injuring four family members, the sources said.
The attackers also damaged Palestinian vehicles, while army forces fired live rounds as they intervened to protect settlers.
In the towns of Turmus Ayya and Abu Falah, north of Ramallah in the central West Bank, witnesses told Anadolu that illegal settlers attacked farmers and set fire to their fields.
The Health Ministry also said that five people were injured and treated by its medics after being assaulted by illegal settlers in the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah.
Illegal settlers also attacked Palestinian families in Silwad as they were heading to their olive groves, beating them with sticks and stones, while preventing others from reaching their fields, eyewitnesses told Anadolu.
According to data by the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, illegal Israeli settlers carried out 7,154 assaults on Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank over the course of two years, which resulted in the death of 34 Palestinians and forced migration of 33 Bedouin communities.
Local authorities say more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, around 10,000 wounded, and over 20,000 arrested, including 1,600 children, since the Gaza war in October 2023.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.