Four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were \u200bkilled<\/p>\n
Israeli military says villagers \u200cattacked Israeli hikers<\/p>\n
Palestinian official tells Reuters they came under attack<\/p>\n
NABLUS:\u00a0Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the establishment of new settler outposts in the occupied West Bank on Friday, in a retaliatory move after a confrontation left two Israelis and four Palestinians dead.<\/p>\n
Violence in the West Bank has surged since the Gaza war began with Hamas\u2019s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s violence erupted near the settlement of Havat Gilad and the neighboring Palestinian village of Tell, in territory occupied by Israel since 1967.<\/p>\n
Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank alongside around three million Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Following Friday\u2019s incident, Netanyahu vowed to \u201cact with full force against the terrorists and those who orchestrate and sponsor them.\u201d<\/p>\n
All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, while outposts are small settlements established usually without government approval and therefore illegal under Israeli law.<\/p>\n
They are usually on hilltops, often composed of a few mobile homes set up overnight by small groups of settlers, with the aim of eventually being recognized as a proper settlement.<\/p>\n
According to Walid Zidan, head of the Tell village council, Friday\u2019s clashes began when a group of about 20 settlers entered the village.<\/p>\n
\u201cVillagers came out to defend their homes and property. Clashes and physical altercations broke out between the residents and the settlers,\u201d Zidan told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsraeli soldiers were present and together with the settlers began opening fire \u2026 it was the settlers who stormed the village, with the intention of killing, vandalising and setting property on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arrests<\/p>\n
The Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry reported four Palestinians killed and four others wounded in the incident.<\/p>\n
Grieving Palestinian relatives gathered at two hospitals in the nearby city of Nablus, where the victims\u2019 bodies were taken, an AFP journalist reported.<\/p>\n
Shortly after, Israeli troops came to a hospital to take away a man who had been injured during the clash, as well as his brother, a hospital official told AFP.<\/p>\n
The AFP journalist at the scene saw troops taking at least one handcuffed man from the hospital.<\/p>\n
The military said troops arrested two men who had taken part in the clashes from the Nablus hospital.<\/p>\n
The military said there was a violent confrontation between dozens of Palestinians and Israeli civilians in Tell Friday.<\/p>\n
An emergency response security team from Havat Gilad was called to the scene along with soldiers, a military official said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the confrontation, shots were fired on both sides and a weapon belonging to a member of the emergency response security team was stolen by a Palestinian terrorist,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne member of the security team was killed during the incident and additional security members were injured,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The clashes in Tell subsequently died down, he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Extensive\u2019 operation<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s Magen David Adom emergency service said a man in his thirties was pronounced dead near Havat Gilad.<\/p>\n
Two other people, in their twenties, were evacuated by helicopter with gunshot wounds, one of them in a serious condition.<\/p>\n
The military later said another Israeli, an officer, was also killed in the violence.<\/p>\n
AFP journalists were unable to reach the site of the violence as Israeli forces had set up roadblocks across the area.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military said it was preparing to launch an \u201cextensive counterterrorism operational activity\u201d in the West Bank, adding it had postponed soldiers\u2019 leave in the territory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are pursuing every terrorist involved in the attack,\u201d military chief Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said as he visited Tell, according to a statement.<\/p>\n
Palestinians reported other bouts of violence involving settlers in the north of the West Bank.<\/p>\n
In one such incident, settlers attacked the village of Farata, also near Havat Gilad, according to Abdel Moneim Shanneh, head of the local council.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe settlers set fire to the olive groves\u2026 The army prevented young men from the village from extinguishing fires and opened fire on them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams transported eight individuals injured in the attack, including six with live bullet wounds.<\/p>\n
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that two men were injured during another attack by settlers in the village of Sarra, also near Nablus.<\/p>\n
Israeli figures show that at least 48 Israelis, including civilians and security personnel, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations since the start of the Gaza war.<\/p>\n
According to an AFP tally based on data from the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli soldiers or settlers have killed at least 1,094 Palestinians, including both militants and civilians, over the same period.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were \u200bkilled Israeli military says villagers \u200cattacked Israeli hikers Palestinian official tells…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-558428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}