[ 19/12/2010 - 10:32 AM ]
NABLUS, (PIC)-- A gang of Jewish settlers were spotted late Friday night flocking into the village of Tel, south of the West Bank city of Nablus and cutting down fruit trees and vegetable plants on the farms there.
The incident was one of a series of attacks by Jewish settlers against Palestinian villages surrounding settlements, Douglas said.
In a separate incident, other Jewish settlers set fire to 17 sheep owned by a Palestinian farmer from the Nablus village of Aqraba while he was tending his sheep outside of the town, Aqraba mayor Jawdat Bani Jabir reported.
The settlers approached the victim armed and riding in a white car and asked him to approach. Scared, he declined and fled the scene.
The assailants then proceeded to gather the sheep in an area containing dry grass and set the entire area ablaze, killing 12 sheep, five critically injured and two others with second degree burns. The loss was estimated at 8,500 Jordanian dinars.
The area is engulfed by three Jewish settlements. Jewish settlers reportedly killed two Palestinian-owned sheep in another Nablus village a few days back.
UN: Israel demolished 47 Palestinian structures in one weekCAIRO, (PIC)-- OCHA, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, issued a report Saturday documenting 47 Palestinian-owned structures that were ripped down in the West Bank's Area C in one week for allegedly missing building permits.
Israeli authorities sparked the widest-ranging demolition process in the Nablus village of Kirba Tana with 29 buildings crushed, 11 of them residential structures, 17 barns, an elementary school, ejecting 61 people from their homes, including 13 children. 100 others were affected. “This was the third time since 2005 this village was subjected to intense demolition activity,” OCHA reported.
The lives of 960 people and 4,000 animals in the Al-Khalil area were affected after 14 wells were destroyed. Four fruit and vegetable stands were knocked down in the Jordan valley affecting four families.
Israeli authorities issued orders to stop construction on six buildings in the area, four of them in the Dir Abu Mishaal village in Ramallah.
46 people constituting four families in that time span were evicted from their homes near the Ramallah village of Al-Mughayyir, because their rural compound fell in a closed military zone. The Israelis demolished two other homes in east Jerusalem, affecting two families and fourteen people.
Published yesterday (updated) 19/12/2010 12:48 NABLUS (Ma’an) -- A farmer said he watched a group of settlers in the northern West Bank gather his sheep and set them on fire Saturday afternoon. When he returned to the area, he told officials, he found 12 sheep burned alive, five with severe burns and two others that were only lightly burned. "I've lost at least $12,000," he said, calling the act abominable.
Mayor of Aqraba, the village near where the attack took place, Jawdat Bani Jabir, identified the farmer as 40-year-old Samir Muhammad Bani Fadl.
Fadil said he was out pasturing his sheep in the eastern part of the village when a group of armed settlers approached him in a white car and asked him to come and speak with them. Feeling threatened, in an area where rights organizations recorded a ballooning number of settler attacks and vandalism during the month of October, Fadil fled and watched the group from an adjacent hill.
According to the farmer's testimony, the settlers gathered all the sheep into an area thick with brush, and set fire to the bushes.
Mayor Jabir called the attack vicious, and blamed the residents of the settlements encircling the area: Maale Efraym, Itamar, and Hetzit.
"Fadil has nine daughters who depend on him and he has sustained a deep loss today," the mayor said, calling for an inquiry into the incident.
Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official in charge of following up with settlement activities in the northern West Bank, condemned the attack demanding pressure on Israel by the international community to quell settler violence.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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