AFP - Israeli settlers stoned Palestinian homes in a West Bank village where troops hunted those behind a grisly attack on a settler family, Palestinian officials said.
Palestinian security officials said hundreds of settlers, some masked, had rallied on the eastern edge of Awarta village, near Nablus, with some hurling stones at houses there.
One Palestinian was injured when a number of settlers broke into his property and beat him, witnesses inside the village told AFP.
It was not clear whether Israeli soldiers operating inside the village had intervened.
An army spokesman said the settlers had a permit to demonstrate and he was unaware of any violent incident there. By late evening the village was quiet, the Israeli military and Palestinians told AFP.
The village was under curfew for the third consecutive day on Monday as troops scoured buildings in a search for the killers of five members of the Israeli settler family, including a baby.
They were stabbed as they slept on Friday at the nearby Itamar settlement.
The perpetrators broke into the family home and in a frenzied attack killed five members of the Fogel family -- three-month-old Hadas, four-year-old Elad, Yoav, 11, and their parents Udi and Ruthie.
The culprits are widely believed to be Palestinian, although details of the manhunt have been placed under a court gag order.
"The direction that's being examined, in general, is a terrorist attack," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
Amnesty International on Monday repeated its condemnation of the murders while calling on Israel to prevent settler reprisals against Palestinians.
"Since Saturday morning, Israeli settlers have reportedly used stones, Molotov cocktails, guns, clubs and knives to attack Palestinians in vehicles and in their homes in villages and towns across the West Bank," Amnesty said.
"Settlers have also burned fields, cars and property. The Israeli security forces must act to prevent reprisals against Palestinian civilians by armed Israeli settlers and bring those responsible to justice," it added.
Elsewhere in the West Bank on Monday around 200 settlers from Kedumim which lies five kilometres (three miles) west of Nablus demonstrated on the main road leading north, hurling stones at passing Palestinian cars.
To the east of Nablus, witnesses reported seeing settlers throwing stones from their parked cars at passing traffic.
Settlers reported stones thrown by Palestinians at Israeli traffic near Nablus and close to Shiloh settlement, near Ramallah. No casualties were reported in any of the incidents.
Overnight, settlers torched two Palestinian cars just north of El-Bireh, also near Ramallah, residents said. They said the two vehicles, which were set alight before dawn near Beit El settlement, were totally gutted.
Both the army and the police are on alert, fearing a wave of revenge attacks in response to the killings, pictures of which were widely circulated by the settler leadership.
"This act was abominable, inhuman and immoral," Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told Israeli public radio on Monday. He said Palestinian security forces had joined with Israel to hunt the killer or killers.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Abbas's remarks, but said that such strong condemnations also need to be made in the Arab press.
Britain meanwhile joined international condemnation of Israel's announcement it had approved 400 more settler homes on the West Bank, a decision taken 24 hours after Itamar murders.
"We have consistently made clear, including at the UN with France and Germany, that settlements are illegal, an obstacle to peace and a threat to a two-state solution," said a Foreign Office spokesman.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Saturday condemned the Itamar killings as "an act of incomprehensible cruelty and brutality".
No comments:
Post a Comment