HUWARA (Palestinian Territories): A Palestinian was killed on Friday during clashes with Israelis in the occupied West Bank town of Huwara, where renewed violence during his funeral left nine others hospitalised.
The northern West Bank town has this year witnessed several fatal shootings by Palestinians against Israelis and reprisal attacks by hundreds of Jewish settlers against locals and their property.
In the latest fatal incident, the Palestinian health ministry said 19-year-old Labib Dmidi “was shot in the heart by settlers”.
Mayor Moin Dmidi told AFP that the Palestinian teenager had sought refuge on the roof of his house, which was being attacked by settlers, when one of them shot him dead.
Another resident of the town, Abderrahman Dmidi, said the attack took place as settlers descended on Huwara overnight.
“More than 200 settlers gathered in the middle of Huwara after midnight, shouting and dancing, some of them with covered faces,” he told AFP.
“They began throwing stones towards some houses, and then the young people... tried to defend their homes by throwing stones,” he added.
The confrontation came after the Israeli army said soldiers shot dead a Palestinian who had opened fire on a car stuck in traffic at a junction adjacent to Huwara late on Thursday, without hitting any of the Israeli civilians inside.
The army said dozens of Israeli civilians gathered in Huwara and engaged in stone-throwing clashes with Palestinians, before soldiers intervened with “riot dispersal means to defuse the confrontation”.
It said a suspect “threw a block at an Israeli vehicle”, prompting soldiers to respond with live fire. It added that “a hit was identified”. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said it treated 58 people at the scene of the clashes who had suffered from tear gas inhalation.
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