Two more Palestinians killed in extremist settlers’ attack on West Bank

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA, citing the Palestinian Health Ministry, identified the victims of the Monday attack near the northern West Bank village of Aqrabah, located eighteen kilometers (11.18 miles) southeast of Nablus, as Abdulrahman Maher Bani Fadel, 30, and Mohammed Ashraf Bani Jame, 21.

Salah Bani Jaber, mayor of Aqrabah, who witnessed the settler attack, said that about 50 settlers, many of them armed, attacked members of his community.

They “assaulted residents and fired at people in the town leading to the death of two citizens,” the mayor said, adding that “the occupation army is still holding the bodies.”

“There were Israeli soldiers at the scene who stood idly by watching the settlers,” he told the Reuters news agency.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli soldiers blocked its ambulances from reaching the area and tending to the wounded.

The Israeli military asserted in a statement that it was looking into the incident.

Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank are under constant threat as armed Israeli settlers continue to launch violent attacks on them, their families, and their homes in acts of vengeance.

The recent settler attacks are part of a broader wave of violence which has heightened since Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. The war has killed at least 33,797 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, and wounded another 76,465 individuals, according to the health ministry in the territory.

Armed settlers and the Israeli army have killed 460 Palestinians and injured 4,800 others in the occupied West Bank since October 7.