Israeli settler kills Palestinian in occupied West Bank

The Israeli army says the Palestinian was armed, but the man’s family says they do not believe he had any ties to armed groups.

An Israeli settler shot dead a Palestinian man near an illegal settlement in the occupied northern West Bank.

The Israeli army said the Palestinian was armed with knives and an explosive device and entered a farm near Karnei Shomron, near the Palestinian town of Qalqilya, on Friday.

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed that a Palestinian man had been killed by an Israeli settler and named the man 21-year-old Abdulkarim Badie Sheikh, but did not provide further details about the incident.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency said Israeli soldiers then raided the nearby town of Sanniriya, where Sheikh was from, and “looted” several homes, including that of Sheikh’s family.

Relatives of the slain man said he was religious but were unaware of any membership in Palestinian armed groups. They said the army was still withholding his body.

The Israeli army separately said its troops raided Nilin, a town near the Palestinian city of Ramallah, overnight and opened fire on a mob throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, hitting one person , without specifying whether they were killed or injured.

Palestinian officials did not immediately notice the casualties in the Nilin raid.

On Thursday, a Hamas gunman opened fire in Tel Aviv, wounding three people, one of them critically, before being killed by police and passersby. The group said the attack was in response to Israel’s killing of three Palestinian gunmen earlier that day in the West Bank.

During the Nilin raid, the Israeli army said it had arrested two relatives of the Hamas gunman and earmarked his home for demolition.

Palestinians and human rights organizations condemn the demolition of houses as collective punishment and illegal under international law.

Over the past year, Israeli forces have made thousands of arrests in the West Bank and killed more than 200 Palestinians, including combatants and civilians. More than 40 Israelis and foreigners have been killed in attacks by Palestinians during the same period.

Israeli raids have become deadlier this year since a new far-right government came to power, empowering settler groups in the occupied West Bank, which recently swept through the town of Huwara in an attack that has been labeled a “pogrom.”

Israeli settlements, illegal under international law, are home to between 600,000 and 750,000 Israeli settlers scattered across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, despite Palestinians seeking the land as part of a future state.