WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Palestinian protestors have been severely injured after being shot by Zionist troops during a demonstration over illegal settlements in the village of Beita on the outskirts of occupied Nablus.
According to Ahmad Jibril, director of the Red Crescent emergency center in Nablus, Palestinian protestors gathered at a rally were violently dispersed by the occupation forces who injured one after shooting a rubber-coated steel bullet in his hand and hitting four others with canisters in the head. Scores of others suffered suffocation as a result of tear gas inhalation.
He added that another Palestinian was seriously injured and rushed to hospital after falling from a height after being chased by the troops.
The village has seen regular demonstrations to voice anger at a nearby Zionist settler outpost, often leading to violent dispersals by occupation forces.
Meanwhile, in the latest incident of vandalism and violence against Palestinians, a group of extremist settlers attacked vehicles of Palestinians at a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, local media reports said Sunday.
Palestine’s official Wafa news agency quoting local sources reported that the latest assault took place near the Tayseer military checkpoint, east of Tubas in the occupied northeastern West Bank.
Muataz Besharat, a local anti-settlement activist, said that the settlers physically attacked the Palestinians, pelted their vehicles with stones and smashed the windshields.
The attack comes as settlers are seeking to establish a new outpost in an Israeli military camp erected on Palestinian citizens’ lands in the area.
According to human rights groups, incidents of sabotage and violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians and their property are a daily occurrence throughout the West Bank.
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem last month released two videos showing armed settlers and masked Zionists fatally shooting Palestinians who did not pose any danger to them, with the Tel Aviv regime’s troops standing idly by.
More than 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Al-Quds. All settlements are illegal under international law.