Israeli settlers set fire to a mosque in an occupied West Bank village on Wednesday morning.
Osama Abdullah, head of the village council in Jiljiliya, north of Ramallah, told AFP that “settlers set fire to the ablution room, caused damage to the village’s main mosque, and scrawled hostile slogans on the outer walls”.
AFP journalists who visited the mosque on Wednesday reported that the ceiling, walls and floors were blackened by smoke and flames.
They said graffiti in Hebrew had been scrawled on the walls, including some reading “vengeance” and “hi from the Hilltop Youth”.
The Hilltop Youth are a group of Israeli settlers in the West Bank who regularly commit acts of violence and aggression against Palestinians.
Abdullah said settlers arrived to burn down the mosque between 2am and 3am but found its door was locked, so instead set fire to a room dedicated to ablutions on a lower floor.
He said Palestinian civil defence crews, along with young men from the village and neighbouring areas, extinguished the blaze.
The United Nations recently warned that Israeli settler violence in the West Bank has reached record levels, with an average of six attacks daily causing casualties or damage.
