Clashes erupted Friday between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank village of Al-Mughayyir, the site of a deadly incident last week.
Hundreds of demonstrators waving Palestinian flags rallied in the village. Palestinians hurled stones and soldiers responded with tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that seven Palestinians were injured. There was no immediate comment from the IDF.
Hamdi Na’asan, 38, was killed last Saturday near Al-Mughayyir during clashes with settlers and soldiers.
There are conflicting claims as to how the deadly incident unfolded. Local Palestinians say the settlers fatally shot Na’asan during an altercation, but residents of the neighboring Adei Ad outpost claim their security guards fired shots in the air to chase away Palestinians attackers who stabbed a Jewish teen.
In a statement to the media, the Israeli 19-year-old who was allegedly attacked said he had walked 200 meters (600 feet) from the outpost for some solitude when “suddenly I saw three Arabs who ambushed me. They attacked me, hit me, and tried to drag me towards [their] village. I managed to escape to Adei Ad, and on the way I realized I had been stabbed in the hand. I saw blood.”
The teen said he got in touch with the outpost’s security squad and “they gave chase to the attackers.” He added that he was lightly injured, but did not require hospitalization.
While Israeli authorities have not yet asked Palestinians to provide testimony, police summoned over 20 members of the Adei Ad security squad that responded to Saturday’s incident to offer their account of what took place. A police spokesman clarified to The Times of Israel that the settlers were not questioned as suspects, but that their weapons were seized as part of the investigation.
Confusion still surrounds the different versions of events and the timeline of the clash. Audio recordings obtained by Hadashot news appeared to show the army being called by a local settler, half an hour after the clash started, who said that the Adei Ad civilian security team had been sent to the village. The caller was told by the army officer that “we are not dispatching forces to that.”
Some 10,000 Palestinians took part in violent protests along the Gaza border on Friday, burning tires and hurling rocks and explosive devices at IDF soldiers.
Troops were responding to the demonstrators with tear gas and occasional live fire.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 23 protesters were injured by live fire in clashes with Israeli security forces along the border and a female paramedic was hit in the face with a tear gas canister.
The weekly protest comes with an Egyptian security delegation reportedly in the Gaza Strip to meet Hamas leaders and discuss efforts to maintain calm in and around the coastal enclave. The delegation is being led by Ahmed Abdelkhaliq, the official in the Egyptian General Intelligence Services responsible for Palestinian affairs, reports said.
For the past several months, Egypt, United Nations special coordinator to the Middle East peace process Nikolay Mladenov and Qatar have worked to preserve calm in Gaza and prevent flareups between Israel and terror groups in the Strip.
Last week, tensions between Israel and terror groups in Gaza rose after a Palestinian sniper opened fire on a group of IDF soldiers. The bullet hit the helmet of an officer, lightly injuring him, the army said at the time.
The IDF added that in response to the incident, it struck an observation post belonging to Hamas in eastern Gaza, near the Bureij refugee camp. The terror group’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said one of its members was killed in the strike.
Friday’s protests were held at various locations along the border under the banner of Hamas’s ongoing “March of Return” demonstrations.
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