UPDATES WITH DETAILS, CHANGES HEADLINE
By Aysar Alais and Ikram Kouachi
ISTANBUL (AA) - Two Palestinian girls were wounded by Israeli army gunfire in the West Bank city of Jenin on Sunday, as illegal settlers set fire to a Palestinian vehicle and scrawled racist graffiti in Hebron in the latest wave of violence across the occupied territory.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said its medics treated two girls, aged 12 and 16, who were shot in the leg with live fire in the Jabarat neighborhood of Jenin. Both were transferred to a hospital for further treatment.
Local sources told Anadolu that Israeli forces raided a residential building overlooking the Jenin refugee camp, after which gunfire was heard from inside the premises.
The raid came hours after illegal Israeli settlers set fire to a vehicle and sprayed racist graffiti in eastern Hebron in the southern West Bank.
Ishaq Idris, a resident of Hebron, told Anadolu that the attackers stormed the area, surrounded his home, and torched his vehicle before fleeing the scene.
Idris said the latest settler attack was part of an ongoing campaign to pressure Palestinian residents to leave the area and make way for illegal settlement expansion.
The assault followed a deadly settler shooting on Saturday in the town of Aqraba, south of Nablus, where a Palestinian was killed and eight others were injured.
According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, nine Palestinians have been killed by illegal settlers since the start of 2025, while the death toll from settler violence since Oct. 7, 2023 has reached 31.
The commission also reported that illegal settlers carried out 2,153 attacks across the West Bank in the first half of this year alone.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, at least 1,012 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in the West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
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.