Israeli settlers set fire to homes and cars in violent West Bank raids 

Israeli settlers have launched another wave of raids in the occupied West Bank, with houses and cars set on fire and a Palestinian child attacked.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that a man and his child were attacked with “sharp instruments” in the village of Khirbet Shuweika, south of Hebron, on Friday.

The father and child were taken to hospital due to head injuries.

Israeli settlers torched a home in the village of al-Lubban Asharqiya, south of Nablus, after which members of the Palestinian Civil Defence arrived to extinguish the blaze.

In Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, Wafa cited security sources that the settlers “stormed the outskirts of the village, burned a citizen’s vehicle, and wrote racist slogans on the walls of houses”.

In the village of al-Asa’asa in Jenin, Israeli forces forced residents to exhume a newly buried body and take it elsewhere. They claimed the first site was too close to an illegal Israeli settlement.

Israeli settlers also attacked a Palestinian man in the town of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, and stole his mobile phone.

A group of Palestinians were picnicking in the Burak Sulayman (Solomon’s Pools) area, south of Bethlehem, but were forced to leave after Israeli forces fired stun grenades at them.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society treated two people for tear gas inhalation and evacuated five others from the scene after the attack.

In the town of Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem, the mayor, Taysir Abu Mufreh, told Wafa that Israeli forces fired “tear gas and sound bombs” at a group of worshippers who were leaving a local mosque and locked a number of them inside.

On Friday, Israeli forces arrested four Palestinian men in the town of Battir, west of Bethlehem, while they were hiking near a railway line. The following day, three more Palestinians were arrested during a raid on the city of Nablus.

Settlers attacked the town of Silwad, northeast of Ramallah, leading to clashes when residents confronted them.

Human rights groups say Israeli authorities have allowed the settlers to operate with total impunity in their attacks against Palestinians.

In February, Israel approved a plan to claim large areas of the occupied West Bank as “state property”.

More than 700,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.