Hundreds of armed settlers continued their arsonist actions yesterday. They set fire to dozens of houses in several villages in the Ramallah area. Particularly devastating was the attack in Umm Safa, which required Palestinian firefighters to rescue a family trapped by a fire set to their home by settlers. A 5-year-old boy, hospitalized for asphyxiation, is in serious condition. The eight members of the family were given first aid treatment in the firefighters’ vehicles, “because the Israeli army, which watched passively the havoc wrought by the settlers, prevented ambulances from entering the village,” reads the Palestinian Health Ministry statement. Journalists who arrived at the scene testified to a local radio station in Ramallah that their station was the target of a shooting by settlers.
In Ya’bud and Arraba, south of Jenin, occupation forces arrested three 12-year-olds for their stone-throwing opposition to the devastation in their villages. They were taken to Israeli army barracks and have not been returned to their families.
Savage colonization instigated by extremist ministers Bin Gvir and Smotrich also continues. In Tubas, a dozen settlers occupied, at gunpoint, an agricultural area in the village of Deir Istyia and parked their caravans [there]. According to the mayor, Maad Salman, the settlers arrived accompanied by the army, which protected their operation, holding at bay the population that opposed the armed seizure of the land.