Palestine: Settlers set fire to two mosques in the West Bank - Sarmad

Palestinian officials said Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank, set fire to two mosques and wrote provocative slogans on walls.

Officials stated that villagers left their homes to confront the settlers, and a Palestinian video showed a man disarming a settler.

Local Palestinian authorities confirmed that settlers began provocative acts that led to outbreaks of violence, while the Israeli military claimed both sides exchanged fire.

This comes amid a series of escalating clashes involving settlers, with United Nations and Palestinian Authority figures indicating that such incidents have resulted in the deaths of dozens of Palestinians and injured hundreds this year.

Palestinian officials said settlers launched a series of attacks on Palestinian villages in various parts of the West Bank in the early hours of Sunday, in an apparent response to the killing of Israelis.

Abdul Azeem Wadi, head of the Qusra Local Council southeast of Nablus, told Reuters by phone that settlers set fire to a mosque that had just been completed in the village early Sunday morning.

He added, “This mosque was, of course, in its final stages… it was ready… they burned it and wrote slogans in Hebrew on it. The slogans had a Jewish revenge tone.”

He said they wrote the name of a person killed in the village of Tell on Friday, along with the phrase, “The land of Israel will be established with blood, and mosques do not frighten us.”