LONDON: Dozens of Israeli settlers reportedly attacked Palestinian homes and farmland in the occupied West Bank’s Hebron governorate on Monday, injuring six residents.
Activist Osama Makhamra said around 30 armed settlers attacked homes in the village of Umm Al-Khair in Masafer Yatta, in the South Hebron Hills, after the Israeli military closed the village’s main entrance.
According to Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Makhamra claimed the settlers carried out the attack under the protection of Israeli forces. One of the targeted homes is said to belong to Salem Al-Hathaleen.
He added that Israeli forces declared the area around the house a closed military zone for two days and barred family members from reaching sanitation facilities and a livestock pen, leaving the animals without food.
Makhamra also said settlers cut fencing around farmland and severed power lines supplying the home of Ayoub Al-Masri in the Khallet Al-Hummus area, south of the city of Yatta.
The reported attack comes amid broader tensions in Hebron. On June 17, Israel approved the expansion of a Jewish school for settlers in the center of the Palestinian city, a move critics say violates a decades-old agreement.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the plan a day after saying he had canceled an arrangement that gave the Palestinian municipality authority over some planning and construction near Hebron’s historic center, which is home to a contested holy site.
