Illegal Israeli settlers carried out a terrorist attack on the village of Al-Tuwani in the Masafer Yatta area of Al-Khalil (Hebron) in the occupied West Bank, setting fire to the Al-Taqwa Mosque and injuring several Palestinians.
A Palestinian official reported on Sunday that more than two dozen settlers, some of them masked, stormed the village at night, scorched the mosque, and sprayed Hebrew graffiti on its walls. Head of the village council, Mohammed Rabie, said the settlers also set fire to two houses and a dairy factory, injuring two firefighters during the assault.
The Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs confirmed that the illegal settlers, accompanied and protected by Israeli occupation forces, deliberately used flammable materials to burn the mosque, causing extensive damage. Local residents and civil defense teams rushed to put out the flames, but clashes erupted with Israeli forces during the firefighting efforts.
Israeli police claimed they deployed officers after reports of damage, including a burned vehicle, damage to the mosque door, and graffiti on the walls. They stated that their investigation “is still ongoing.”
This mosque arson is part of the intensifying wave of aggression by illegal Israeli settlers, fully backed by the Zionist occupation army, against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Zionist regime’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.
In other attacks, four Palestinians were injured in Beita, near Nablus, where Israeli forces also closed the western entrance to nearby Burqa village with earth mounds, raided homes, and detained residents for field interrogations.
Israeli forces abducted two young men during raids on homes in Qabatiya, Jenin. Three Palestinians were abducted in the village of al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah. One Palestinian was abducted in Bethlehem (Beit Lahm).
Settlers released their sheep onto Palestinian-owned farmland east of Rammun village in Ramallah.
The Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs condemned the mosque attack as “a fully-fledged act of terrorism” aimed at displacing Palestinians from Masafer Yatta and advancing the Zionist expansionist project.
Since October 2023, illegal settlers backed by Israeli occupation forces have intensified their terrorist attacks across the occupied West Bank, killing more than 1,200 Palestinians, wounding thousands, and carrying out hundreds of abductions as part of their systematic campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing.
