A video released by an Israeli human rights group appears to show an Israeli settler firing a pistol at a group of Palestinian protesters, while police and soldiers stand by.
The incident was filmed by Palestinians from the West Bank village of Asira al-Qibliya on Saturday afternoon. A 24-year-old Palestinian, Fathi Asayira, was taken to hospital with facial injuries following the shooting.
According to B’Tselem, which uploaded the footage to YouTube, a large group of settlers, some masked and armed, approached the village from the nearby settlement of Yitzhar and began throwing rocks and starting fires. After a group of Palestinians gathered and threw rocks in return at the settlers, Israeli police and soldiers arrived on the scene.
One of the settlers is seen crouching while aiming and then firing his pistol at the group of Palestinians. Another settler is seen firing an assault rifle.
“The video footage raises grave suspicions that the soldiers present did not act to prevent the settlers from throwing stones and firing live ammunition at the Palestinians,” B’Tselem said.
“The soldiers did not try to remove the settlers and in fact are seen standing by settlers while they are shooting and stone throwing,” it added.
In a statement, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it was investigating the shooting. Security forces arrived at the scene following stone throwing by both sides in an effort to separate them.
“There was a shooting during the incident and the matter is being investigated, but on the surface, the video that was released does not seem to represent the whole incident,” the statement said.
The Palestinian Authority demanded an impartial investigation into the incident and action from the international community over settler attacks and provocation.
“The gravity of the footage lies not only in the settlers’ provocations and shooting live ammunition towards unarmed residents, but also in the irresponsibility of the Israeli soldiers who stood watching the events,” a statement from the Palestinian prime minister’s office said.
The settlement’s spokesman, Avraham Binyamin, was quoted in the Israeli media as saying its security squad came under a hail of stones while trying to extinguish fires lit by Palestinians.
“It is clear that use of arms by IDF forces or the security squad was done in a tangible life-endangering situation,” he said.
Villagers in Asira al-Qibliya say attacks and intimidation by settlers from Yitzhar are routine. Yitzhar has a reputation for being one of the most hardline settlements in the West Bank. Israel’s education ministry closed down a state-funded yeshiva (religious school) on the settlement in November last year after Israeli security agency Shin Bet said it had accumulated evidence that students were engaged in acts of violence against Palestinian villagers.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
RSS