A local citizen explained that a bunch of armed settlers severely beat 80-year-old Mahmoud Faqha during his presence with cattle on a piece of land belonging to him in al-Hafasi village near Kafr al-Labad town and the illegal settlement of Einav.

He added that the elderly shepherd was taken to Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarem and later to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus after he suffered from different facial fractures and bruises.

It was not the first time Faqha was assaulted by settlers. He and members of his family had been exposed to settler attacks several times as part of attempts to force them to leave their land in the area.

“The elderly was exposed to a barbaric attack by terrorist settlers practicing venomous acts against our people with the aim of forcing them to leave their lands and then seize them,” Muayyad Shaaban, head of the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, said during his visit to Faqha in the hospital.

He affirmed that such attacks would not succeed in dissuading the Palestinian people from continuing their struggle against the occupation state and its settlers, urging the Palestinian masses in the West Bank to remain steadfast on their own lands, cultivate them and resist any Israeli attempt to appropriate them.

In a separate incident, another group of settlers attacked on the same day Palestinian vehicles traveling on the road between Jenin and Nablus in the northern West Bank.

Local official Ghassan Daghlas reported that settlers hurled rocks at cars on the road near the evacuated site of Homesh outpost — which was built on privately-owned Palestinian land deep inside the occupied West Bank before it was dismantled in 2005.

Daghlas said that no one was injured in the settler attack, which caused different levels of damage to several cars.

Meanwhile, settlers also assaulted Palestinian citizens in Tel Rumeida neighborhood in the central area of al-Khalil City and obstructed their access to their homes. (ILKHA)