Israel arrests two after deadly West Bank clash
NABLUS, Palestinian Territories: Israeli troops arrested two Palestinians overnight on suspicion of involvement in a clash that led to a settler shooting dead a Palestinian in the West Bank, officials said yesterday.
The settler opened fire after his car was surrounded and stoned by Palestinian protesters when he attempted to drive through their demonstration near a military checkpoint in the northern West Bank on Thursday.
Muataz Bani Shemsay, 23, was killed and an Associated Press news agency photographer wounded before the army arrived and dispersed the Palestinians.
Police said the settler was let go on Thursday after giving a statement and was not being investigated as a murder suspect.
“The mob almost lynched me, I looked death in the eyes,” the settler said in a video recording distributed to the media.
Israeli troops arrested Yussef Derieh, an ambulance driver from the village of Aqraba, near the main northern West Bank city of Nablus, who veered his vehicle to the opposite lane and blocked the settler’s car.
They also detained a second Palestinian and seized the ambulance and a bus used to transport some of the protesters, the army said.
Hundreds of Palestinians had gathered at the Huwara checkpoint, south of Nablus and the site of repeated clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian stonethrowers.
The protest was held in support of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails on hunger strike since April 17.
Police said they were also investigating an arson attack in another nearby Palestinian village that appeared to have been carried out by Jewish extremists.
A tractor was torched, and a Star of David and the word ‘revenge’ spray-painted on a nearby wall, in Burin, also south of Nablus.
Palestinian official Ghassan Daghlas said that surveillance camera footage showed the perpetrators were Jewish settlers. — AFP