Two Palestinian teenagers were killed on Wednesday in an attack by Israeli settler militants and army troops on their village in the occupied West Bank, local officials and the Palestinian health ministry said, Reuters reported, amid a rise in violence by Jewish settlers in the territory.
The Palestinian health ministry said the two were aged 16 and 19, while a local official told Palestinian news agency WAFA they died in al-Mughayyir village near Ramallah, according to Reuters.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces had entered al-Mughayyir to provide security for police officers and an Israeli civilian seeking to retrieve livestock. Israeli troops fired on and struck “key instigators” of a “violent disturbance” in which people threw stones at the forces, the military said, adding the incident was under investigation.
The attack comes amid a wave of intensified violence by settler militants in the occupied West Bank following a siege by settlers of Qusra village in August that drew international condemnation, Reuters reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has driven a rapid expansion of settlements in the West Bank, territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war, with dozens of new settlements and settler outposts established in the area, according to the report.
Rights groups say the growing settler presence on the edge of Palestinian villages, such as Qusra, forms part of a wider effort by settlers to seize more Palestinian land, further eroding territory where Palestinians aim to establish a state, Reuters said.
(Reuters)
Read more:
