ISTANBUL

Three Palestinians were injured on Saturday after illegal armed Israeli settlers opened fire during an attack on a village in the occupied West Bank, local media said.

A group of illegal armed settlers, backed by Israeli forces, attacked residents near the village of Al-Minya, southeast of Bethlehem in the southern West Bank, and fired live bullets at them, wounding three in the lower limbs, Zayed Kawazbeh, head of the village council, told the official news agency Wafa.

The injured were hospitalized for medical attention.

Kawazbeh said illegal settlers also brought their livestock to graze among Palestinian olive trees, describing the move as “a deliberate provocation aimed at displacing residents and seizing lands adjacent to nearby settlements.”

He added that Israeli forces were present at the scene and provided protection to the illegal settlers, heightening fear and tension among villagers.

The attack came shortly after illegal settlers attacked Palestinians harvesting olives in the village of Burin, south of Nablus, and assaulted several of them.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the current olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank has seen the highest level of illegal settler attacks since 2020.

The agency added that 126 attacks were recorded in 70 Palestinian towns and villages, while over 4,000 olive trees and saplings were vandalized.

The attacks came amid a sharp rise in settler violence against Palestinian farmers during the annual olive harvest, which typically begins in mid-October each year.

According to the official Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, 259 attacks on Palestinians were carried out by the Israeli army and illegal settlers during the olive harvest season.

Israeli attacks have escalated across the occupied West Bank since October 2023, killing more than 1,062 Palestinians and injuring 10,300 others, according to Palestinian figures.

In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.