2024-04-14 06:09:24
The Israeli army announced on Saturday that it had found the body of a missing Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank, who it said had been killed in a “terrorist attack”. Dozens of Jewish settlers stormed the Palestinian village of Mughajir on Friday, killing one Palestinian and injuring 25 others while searching for a 14-year-old Israeli boy. With the announcement of the boy’s death came a new wave of attacks.
The media reports on dozens of injured. Saturday brought the heaviest settlement rampage since the start of the new war in the Gaza Strip. According to witnesses, they attacked several communities, setting cars and houses on fire. The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that they also attacked and injured a photographer for the paper who wanted to document the violence.
The Israeli army announced that it had recorded dozens of wounded in several places and that “all incidents have now ended”. Palestinian sources say at least 20 were injured and that settlers blocked entrances to two villages, threw stones and some also fired firearms.
The violence broke out already on Friday
Already on Friday, Jewish settlers in the area broke into a Palestinian village and set fire to houses and cars while Israeli forces searched for the missing boy. A 26-year-old Palestinian died in the clashes, but it is not clear whether he was shot by settlers or by intervening Israeli troops.
In light of the killing of the boy and the associated violence, the Israeli government called on the public not to take justice into their own hands and let the security forces track down the “terrorists”. The radical Palestinian movement Hamas, in turn, issued a statement calling on Palestinians in the West Bank to fight against what it described as “settler militias”.
There are 2.7 million Palestinians and about half a million Jews living in the West Bank, and the Israeli army conducts regular raids against Palestinian radicals in the occupied territories. Violence in the West Bank has escalated since the start of Israel’s current war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The balance of victims of the conflict that began on October 7
The conflict began on October 7 last year after a terrorist attack in the south of Israel, during which Hamas gunmen murdered 1,200 people and dragged about 250 people into Palestinian territory. In the first and so far only ceasefire at the end of November, less than half of the hostages were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Allegedly 133 hostages remain in captivity.
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 33,686 Palestinians and wounded 76,309 since October 7, the Hamas-controlled health ministry said Saturday. In the past 24 hours, 52 Palestinians were killed and 95 wounded, the authority added in a statement.