Four Palestinians killed in Israeli forces, settler attack near Nablus

Four Palestinians have been killed in an attack by Israeli forces and settlers southwest of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Four other Palestinians were injured in the attack on the town of Tal, “three of them critically”, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a statement on Friday.

Israeli health officials separately reported that one Israeli settler was killed and others injured in the area.

The town of Tal, which is close to the illegal Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad, was attacked by Israeli settlers earlier on Friday, local and security sources said. The settlers opened live fire as Palestinians tried to protect their homes.

Essam Saifi, a local leader in the Palestinian Fatah party from Tal, told the Reuters news agency ⁠in a phone call that about 25 to 30 Israeli settlers initially attacked the eastern ⁠area of the town and tried to break into ⁠two houses there. The residents came out to confront them and the settlers opened fire.

Half an hour later, Saifi said, the Israelis returned ‌and attacked the western part of the town, striking a child with a weapon. This caused chaos, and the Israeli military ‌arrived and ‌started shooting, along with the settlers, he added.

The Israeli army, however, said it had dispatched troops to the area near the Havat Gilad following what it called “an attack on Israelis hiking in the area”.

The military claimed a Palestinian had stolen a weapon from local security personnel and fired at the Israeli settlers.

According to Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) rescue services, one Israeli was killed in the area and two wounded people were evacuated by helicopter.

Reporting from Nablus, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said Friday’s incident took place after Israeli settlers stormed Tal under the “pretext that they were hiking in the area”.

“Given what we’ve been seeing time and again in these attacks, it’s the settlers who are armed, who are provoking Palestinians and stealing their land. Sometimes we see these settlers pull up in caravans and start putting up temporary tents that later become illegal Israeli settlements,” Ibrahim said.

After the incident, Israeli forces imposed a security cordon around Nablus and Tal.

“In these situations, the Israeli army generally prevents the injured Palestinians from accessing medical help by setting up siege-like conditions around the city,” Ibrahim said. “And that’s what we’re seeing right now, as all checkpoints leading to Tal have been closed.”

‘A renewed image of the ongoing Nakba’

According to the Palestinian health ministry, the killings in Tal bring the toll to 86 Palestinians killed by Israelis across the West Bank since the beginning of the year, including 21 shot by settlers.

The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned the killing of Palestinians by settlers in the “strongest terms”.

“The Ministry affirms that this massacre represents a renewed image of the ongoing Nakba to which our Palestinian people are subjected, and reflects the integration of crimes and roles and the deliberate escalation of these coordinated crimes between the occupation authorities and their forces and settler gangs,” it said in a post on X on Friday.

Meanwhile in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to respond firmly after an Israeli was killed near Tal.

In a post on X, Netanyahu said that he and Defence Minister Israel Katz had instructed the army to take a “series of forceful steps against terror”.

He said these steps include: demolishing the home of the Palestinian reportedly responsible for the death of the Israeli near Tal; collecting weapons and revoking work permits in Palestinian villages he claimed “serve as terror hotspots”; bolstering Israeli forces across the West Bank; setting up checkpoints; and accelerating the regularisation of farms and the establishment of new ones.

Netanyahu added that they will allow Israeli security forces to “operate freely and at full strength”.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich earlier called on the army to act with an “iron fist” against the Palestinian town and its surroundings where the Israeli died.

“The people of the farms and the heroic settlement pioneers are the defensive wall of the State of Israel. We will continue to strengthen and honour them for their steadfast stand for our existence,” he said in a post on X.