Governor of Salfit says the settlers had previously entered the village ‘under the protection of the Israeli army’.
Published On 20 Dec 2024
Israeli settlers have set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank, while also defacing the building’s facade with hateful and racist slogans such as “Revenge” and “Death to Arabs” spray-painted in Hebrew.
Abdallah Kamil, the governor of Salfit, said on Friday that the attack targeted the Bar al-Walidain mosque in the village of Marda, in the latest incident of settler violence.
“A group of settlers carried out an attack early this morning by setting fire to the mosque,” Kamil said in a statement.
One resident of the village told AFP news agency that the settlers “set fire to the entrance of the mosque and wrote Hebrew slogans on its walls”.
Another resident said the fire was extinguished before it could engulf the entire structure.
Nasfat al-Khufash, head of the Marda village council, also confirmed the “systematic terror attack by a group of settlers”, in an interview with Reuters news agency.
The Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal by the United Nations and under international law.
Governor Kamil said that settlers had previously entered the village “under the protection of the Israeli army”, and