Alwaght- Israeli regime's forces have shot and injured a Palestinian teenage boy during clashes in the occupied West Bank, amid escalation of violence against Palestinians.
Palestine's official WAFA news agency identified the victim a 16-year-old Palestinian boy who was attacked by Israeli soldiers in Kufr Qaddoum area in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.
Sources and witnesses said that the teenager was shot in the chest with a rubber-coated steel bullet fired by the Israeli forces during clashes in the area.
Rights advocates say that Israeli forces have adopted a “shoot-to-kill” policy during clashes with Palestinians, even in clear cases where they could be captured.
Tel Aviv has been criticized for its extensive use of lethal force and extrajudicial killing of Palestinians who do not pose an immediate threat to its forces or to settlers.
Israeli troops have on numerous occasions been caught on camera, brutally killing Palestinians, with the videos going viral online and sparking international condemnation.
Also earlier in the day, fierce clashes erupted after Israeli troops stormed a number of neighborhoods in Ramallah city of West Bank and the Jordan valley. There, Israeli army soldiers used tear gas canisters and stun grenades to disperse angry youth protesters
The Israeli soldiers also forced their way and broke into Palestinian houses during raids on villages around Ramallah and northern Jordan valley.
The Israeli military frequently carries out wide-ranging arrest campaigns across the West Bank under the pretext of searching for ‘wanted’ Palestinians.
Israeli authorities have threatened to launch a massive arrest campaign if Palestinian youths do not stop protests against Israel’s settlement expansion in the occupied territories. Much of the international community regards the settler units as illegal.
Dozens of settlers block Ramallah road
According to Palestinian media reports, under the protection of Israeli soldiers, dozens of extremist Israeli settlers blocked the entrance to the town of Sijnil to the north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Sunday evening.
The setters also attacked several vehicles and houses belonging to Palestinians in the area.
Israeli settlers routinely engage in violence and vandalism against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians are outraged by rising settler attacks on their villages, with backing from Israeli troops.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem has documented hundreds of such attacks this year alone.
However, Israeli authorities rarely prosecute the Israeli settler assaults on Palestinians and their property and the vast majority of the files are closed due to deliberate police failure to investigate properly.
Settler violence includes property and mosque arson attacks, stone-throwing, uprooting of crops and olive trees, attacks on vulnerable homes, among others.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday strongly denounced the rising violent attacks by Israeli forces and extremist settlers across the occupied territories, stressing that Palestinians have a lawful right to resist Israel's occupation of their lands.
The Israeli regime occupied the West Bank in 1967 before starting to dot the Palestinian territory with illegal settlements and severely restricting the Palestinians' freedom of movement there.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East al-Quds as its capital.
