Sept 2 (Reuters) – Two Palestinian teenagers were killed on Wednesday in an attack by Israeli settler militants and army troops on their village in the occupied West Bank, local officials and the Palestinian health ministry said, amid an uptick in violence by Jewish settlers in the territory.
The Palestinian health ministry said the two youths were ages 16 and 19 while a local official told Palestinian news agency WAFA they died in al-Mughayyir village near Ramallah.
The Israeli military said in a statement its forces had entered al-Mughayyir to provide security for police officers and an Israeli civilian seeking to retrieve livestock.
Israeli troops fired on and struck “key instigators” of a “violent disturbance” in which people threw stones at the forces, the military said, adding the incident was under investigation.
The attack comes amid a wave of intensified violence by settler militants in the occupied West Bank after a siege by settlers of Qusra village in August drew international condemnation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has spearheaded a rapid expansion of settlements in the West Bank, territory captured by Israel in a 1967 war. Israel has established dozens of new settlements and settler outposts in the area.
Rights groups say the increasing settler presence on the edge of Palestinian villages, like Qusra, is part of a wider effort by settlers to seize more land from Palestinians, further eating into territory where Palestinians aim to establish a state.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta; Writing by Menna Alaa El-Din; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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