Palestinian woman killed after stone-throwing attack by Israeli settlers: report
The victim was reportedly struck by stones thrown by Israeli settlers while driving with her husband
A 47-year-old Palestinian woman was killed after Israeli settlers threw stones at her vehicle late Friday night near a checkpoint in the West Bank, local media reports.
Aisha Mohammed Aravi, a mother of eight from the nearby village Biddya, was traveling with her husband south of Nablus when a group of settlers reportedly began to throw stones at the vehicle.
According to Palestinian media sources, Aravi was hit in the head by the stones and died shortly after the incident. Her husband was wounded and is reported to be in moderate condition.
The division of the Judea and Samaria District Police, which investigates far right activities, along with Shin Bet security agency confirmed on Saturday that a probe had been opened.
In the wake of the fatal incident, the Rabbis for Human Rights organization warned of a “deteriorating situation” in the West Bank, The Times of Israel said Saturday.
“There has been an increase in the rate of injury to Palestinian civilians,” the organization wrote in a statement, while calling on the Israeli security forces to protect Palestinian civilians.
The incident follows a tense week for Israeli-Palestinian relations in which two Israelis were killed by a coworker in the West Bank early in the week and seven Palestinians were killed in clashes with the IDF during protests on the Gaza border on Friday.
On Thursday, the IDF arrested a 19-year old Palestinian suspected of committing a stabbing attack that moderately wounded two Israelis outside an army base in the West Bank earlier the same day.
On Friday, the IDF announced it has made a number of new arrests in the massive manhunt for the Palestinian assailant who shot and killed two of his Israeli coworkers at a factory in Barkan last Sunday.
The fugitive gunman, 23-year-old Ashraf Waleed Suliman Na’alwa, arrived to the offices of the Alon Group factory in the Barkan industrial zone on Sunday morning and shot dead 28-year-old Kim Levengrond Yehezkel and 35-year-old Ziv Hajbi with an illegally manufactured Carlo-style submachine gun.