TEL AVIV — At least one Palestinian was killed and 12 were injured as armed Israeli settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday afternoon, a day after four Israelis were gunned down by Hamas gunmen near an Israeli settlement.
Some 400 settlers descended from the West Bank settlement of Shilo to the main road of Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian village northeast of Ramallah, torching homes and cars and shooting at residents, said Lafi Adeeb, the mayor of the village.
“Hell broke loose,” said Mohammad Awad Toroms, a 26-year-old resident of Turmus Ayya who, like many others in the small community, is also a U.S. citizen.
“We were left alone, with no one to protect us, neither the Palestinian authorities nor the Israeli soldiers,” said Toroms, who said he helped treat five people hit by live fire.
Hours earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that 1,000 new housing units would be built in Eli, the Israeli settlement where Palestinian militants opened fire on Israeli civilians Tuesday outside a gas station restaurant. Four Israelis were also wounded in the mass shooting, including one who was in serious condition.
The settler attack was reminiscent of a rampage in February in the West Bank town of Huwara, following the killing of two Israeli brothers by a Palestinian gunman.
Violence is surging across the West Bank. On Sunday, an Israeli military raid in the city of Jenin devolved into an unusually fierce firefight that left seven Palestinians dead and involved the rare use of Israeli combat helicopters to extricate its soldiers as they came under militant fire.