Israeli army kills Palestinians teens, settlers torch mosque and attack farms in occupied West Bank

Israeli soldiers killed two 15-year-olds in the West Bank on Thursday, in the latest bout of violence in the occupied territory.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry announced without further details "the martyrdom of Bilal Bahaa Ali Baaran (15 years old) and Muhammad Mahmud Abu Ayash (15 years old), killed by bullets from the occupation this afternoon, Thursday, near Beit Omar, north of Hebron".

Earlier Thursday, the Israeli military said soldiers operating in the area of Karmei Tzur, a Jewish settlement near the Palestinian village of Beit Omar, "eliminated two terrorists who were on their way to carry out a terror attack".

At least 1,003 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since the start of the war in Gaza in 2023, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

This came as Israeli settlers vandalised the Hajja Hamida mosque, located between the occupied West Bank towns of Deir Istiya and Kafr Haris, early on Thursday morning, leaving racist graffiti and attempting to burn the building down.

Local activist Nazmi Salman told The New Arab's Arabic-language edition that the Israelis broke one of the mosque's windows and poured flammable material inside.

The fire damaged parts of the inside of the building, before worshippers attending dawn prayers were able to put out the blaze with the help of civil defence crews.

Some of the graffiti appeared to be pointed at Israeli military official Maj. Gen Avi Bluth, the chief of the military’s Central Command who issued a rare denunciation of the ongoing settler violence on Wednesday.

On one side of the mosque, settlers had left graffiti messages including "We are not afraid",  "We will avenge again",  and "keep on condemning".

For its part, the Palestinian Ministry of Religious Endowments and Affairs condemned the "heinous crime", asserting that the attack "clearly demonstrates the barbarity to which the racist Israeli incitement machine has descended against Islamic and Christian holy sites in Palestine". The ministry urged Islamic institutions, including the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, to work to end the settler attacks.

Settlers carried out other attacks in various areas of the occupied West Bank, including in the northern Jordan Valley, where an attack took place on a Palestinian farm.

On Wednesday night, settlers vandalised livestock equipment and ploughed through a large area of Palestinian farmland. Mahdi Faraghmeh, head of the Al-Maleh and Bedouin encampments council, was quoted by Wafa as saying that the settlers stole iron fences and slashed the tyres of a water tanker.

The attacks come as settlers have fenced off thousands of dunams of Palestinian agricultural land in recent weeks, in an attempt to impose de facto Israeli control over the lands.

This comes amid a surge in settler violence across the occupied West Bank, with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) saying that October saw the highest monthly number of settler attacks since records began in 2006. OCHA documented more than 260 attacks, averaging eight incidents per day.

Israeli forces have continued raids alongside the settler attacks, entering the western area of Nablus on Thursday morning and raiding shops.

In the village of Duma, south of Nablus, Israeli forces surrounded the house of Mujahid Dawabsheh and began removing its contents in preparation for the building's demolition. The house is a home to a family of five.

Duma Village council head Suleiman Dawabsheh told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the raid went ahead despite a case filed to the Israeli courts to prevent it.

x