PARIS: Four European nations Thursday urged Israel to stop what they called increasing “settler violence against Palestinian civilians” in the occupied West Bank.
“We — France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom — strongly condemn the massive increase of settler violence against Palestinian civilians and call for stability in the West Bank,” they said.
“These attacks must stop,” they added, saying they risked undermining plans to end the Gaza war and prospects for long-term peace.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.
It has not ceased despite the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas coming into effect last month.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank — many of them militants, but also scores of civilians — since the start of the Gaza war, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.
At least 44 Israelis, including both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations, according to official Israeli figures.
Israel’s military on Wednesday launched a new operation against Palestinian armed groups in the occupied West Bank. A local governor told AFP that Israeli forces had raided several towns.
Four European nations urge Israel to end West Bank ‘settler violence’
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Four European nations urge Israel to end West Bank ‘settler violence’
- Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank — many of them militants, but also scores of civilians — since start of Gaza war
A man detonates explosive belt during arrest attempt in Iraq, injuring 2 security members
- The raid was being conducted in the Al-Khaseem area in Qaim district that borders Syria
- No members of the security forces were killed
BAGHDAD: A man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up Friday while a security force was trying to arrest him in western Iraq near the Syrian border, killing himself and wounding two security members, an Iraqi security official said.
The raid was being conducted in the Al-Khaseem area in Qaim district that borders Syria, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
The official added that “preliminary information” confirms that no members of the security forces were killed, while two personnel were injured and transferred for medical treatment.
Iraq’s National Security Agency said in a statement that its members besieged a hideout of a Daesh group security official and two of his bodyguards. One bodyguard ignited his explosives belt, killing him. It gave no further details.
Daesh once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014. The extremist group was defeated on the battlefield in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019 but its sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries.
In December, two US service members and an American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blamed on Daesh. The US carried out strikes on Syria days later in retaliation.
US and Iraqi authorities in January began transferring hundreds of the nearly 9,000 Daesh members held in jails run by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria to Iraq, where Iraqi authorities plan to prosecute them.
