Duma, Palestine: Suspected Jewish attackers torched a Palestinian home in the occupied West Bank on Friday, killing an 18-month-old child and seriously injuring his parents and older brother.
The house in Duma, a village near the city of Nablus, had its windows smashed and fire bombs thrown inside shortly before dawn as the family slept, the Israeli regime’s military and witnesses said.
Graffiti in Hebrew reading “revenge” was scrawled outside, below a Star of David.
Palestinian sources said those wounded included the toddler’s parents — mother Reham, 26, and father Sa’ad — as well as four-year-old brother Ahmad. Israeli medical sources said they had been taken to hospital.
The mother was in critical condition with third-degree burns covering 90 per cent of her body, an Israeli doctor told public radio, stressing that her life was threatened. The father had burns on 80 per cent of his body.
The identity of the fourth person wounded as reported by the Israeli military was not immediately clear.
The Israeli regime mobilised a large deployment in occupied Jerusalem’s Old City around the flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque and barred men under 50 years old from entering the complex. Previous such moves have provoked anger from Palestinians.
Some stone-throwing erupted outside the Old City, police said, with one officer lightly injured. In the West Bank city of Hebron, stone-throwing clashes between hundreds of Hamas supporters and Israeli soldiers broke out after prayers. Hamas on Thursday had called for a “day of rage” against Israeli aggression.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation said it held Netanyahu’s government “fully responsible” for the death of 18-month-old Ali Sa’ad Dawabsha, arguing it was “a direct consequence of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to colonist terrorism.”
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called for an investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Netanyahu, whose military forces provide protection to Jewish colonists residing in the occupied West Bank, called the burning an act of terrorism.
Part of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is the ultranationalist Jewish Home party, which advocates more colonies and colonist rights in the West Bank. Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett was quick to denounce the attack, but Palestinians accused the party of laying the ground for it.
It was the worst attack by Israeli assailants since a Palestinian teenager was burnt to death in occupied Jerusalem a year ago. That followed the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinian militants in the West Bank.
Ebrahim Dawabsheh, a Duma resident, said he heard people shouting for help from the house and rushed to it. “I saw two masked men outside,” he said. He went to get help and when he returned they had gone.
“We found the parents outside with burns, they said there was another son in the house. We brought him out and then they said there was another boy inside, but we couldn’t reach the bedroom because of the fire. He was left inside until rescue forces came,” Dawabsheh said.
Pictures circulated by Palestinian media on the internet showed a smiling, chubby-faced boy, named as Ali Dawabsheh.
Footage from the house showed blackened walls and singed family photos scattered across charred belongings.
Several hundred people marched at his funeral procession calling for retribution. “With our souls and blood we shall redeem you, martyr,” they chanted as the child’s small flag-draped body was carried through the village for burial.
Palestinian killed by Israeli gunfire on Gaza border: medics
A Palestinian man was killed and another wounded by Israeli gunfire in the northern Gaza Strip Friday after they approached the border with Israel, a Palestinian medical official told AFP.
Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said 27-year-old Mohammad Al-Masri died of his wounds after being shot near the border fence west of the Beit Lahiya area.
Another man was said to be in a moderate condition following the incident, Qudra said.
