Dozens of Palestinians were injured by Israeli military gunfire as Israeli settlers stormed Halhul town, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, according to security sources.
They confirmed that Israeli forces scores of armed Jewish settlers into the Nabi Yunis Mosque, located in the Palestinian-controlled Area A, sparking confrontations with Palestinian residents.
Soldiers opened fire towards Palestinians protestors, injuring six protestors with rubber-coated steel bullets and causing dozens others to suffocate from tear gas.
The casualties were rushed to nearby hospitals for urgent treatment, while the suffocation cases were treated at the scene.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces escorted some 10 buses packed with settlers into a historical shrine in Tuqu town, east of Bethlehem.
Considered the highest inhabited place in Palestine, Halhul extends over a mountainous area north of Hebron mountains at an elevation of 916 meters above the sea level.
Israel uses archaeology as a key tool to reinforce its bogus territorial claims to historic Palestine. It also used the Jewish nationalist name “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the occupied West Bank to reinforce its bogus claims to the territory and to give them a veneer of historical and religious legitimacy.
There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency