Three Palestinians have been shot dead after dozens of Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian authorities say.
Video footage from Kafr Malik, near Ramallah, on Wednesday night showed a car and a home on fire and Palestinians running away as gunfire is heard.
The Israeli military said forces deployed to the scene found settlers and villagers throwing stones at each other. It added that several “terrorists” opened fire and threw stones at the forces, who returned fire and identified hits. They also arrested five Israelis.
The Palestinian foreign ministry said settlers fired at villagers in their homes during what it called their “terrorist assault”.
The ministry also said Israeli forces prevented ambulance crews from reaching the wounded and obstructed fire crews from entering the village for several hours.
Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state – in the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.
The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last year – although Israel disputes this.
Shortly after the incident in Kafr Malik, there was another attack in the Palestinian community of Dar Fazaa, near the village of Taybeh.
Israeli human rights group BTselem said three people were injured and three cars were torched. It posted CCTV footage showing a group of at least 10 masked men setting one car on fire and throwing stones.
Credit: bbc.com
The post Three Palestinians killed during Israeli settler attack on West Bank village appeared first on The Ghanaian Chronicle.
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