Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank early on Sunday, setting fire to two mosques and scrawling graffiti on buildings, Palestinian officials said.
On Friday, four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers – one of them acting as a local security coordinator – had been killed when a crowd of Israeli settlers made an incursion around the Palestinian village of Tal, southwest of Nablus.
Villagers came out of their homes to confront the settlers, officials said. The subsequent shootout joined a growing series of clashes involving settlers in which dozens of Palestinians have been killed this year and hundreds wounded, according to figures from the UN and the Palestinian Authority.
Abdel Azim Wadi, head of the village council in Qusra, southeast of Nablus, said settlers had torched a newly completed mosque in his village on Sunday.
He said they sprayed slogans in Hebrew on the walls, with messages including ‘Jewish revenge’ and the name of one of the Israelis killed near Tal.
“The village has faced repeated attacks since 2011, and these attacks have increased since the war,” he told Reuters by telephone.
Most countries and United Nations bodies consider Jewish settlements in the West Bank illegal, a position Israel rejects, while the Palestinians seek to establish an independent state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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