West Bank :A house fire in the occupied West Bank suspected to have been set by Jewish extremists killed an 18-month-old Palestinian child, injured a four-year-old brother and both parents on Friday, Israeli security officials said.
The toddler died in a house fire which broke out in a village of Kafr Duma near the West Bank city of Nablus, Reuters reports. The victim’s four-year-old brother and both parents were also injured and have been brought to the hospital. The attack took place in the early hours of the morning when the family was fast asleep and could not react immediately.
The house was reportedly destroyed by fire at the time the family was sleeping inside. The blaze also damaged another house, which was luckily empty at the time. The infamous price tag tactic, typically used by radical Jewish settlers attacking Palestinian homes, Christian churches, mosques and government buildings, in response to Palestinian attacks on Jewish settlements, was daubed on the walls of the family’s home.
She called it a suspected attack with nationalist motives, adding that Israeli security forces were at the scene. “This attack against civilians is nothing short of a barbaric act of terrorism,” Lt Col Peter Lerner – a spokesman for the Israel Defense Force said. “A comprehensive investigation is under way in order to find the terrorists and bring them to justice.”
“The IDF strongly condemns this deplorable attack and has heightened its efforts in the field to locate those responsible,” he added. The death of a child will inevitably aggravate Israeli-Palestinian tensions at the time when the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pursues the controversial settlement expansion policy in the occupied territories.
