West Bank house set ablaze ‘by Israeli extremists’

According to the B'Tselem Human Rights group, one woman lives in the house alone.

Palestinian house torched near Ramallah (photo credit: B'TSELEM)
Palestinian house torched near Ramallah
(photo credit: B'TSELEM)
A house in a West Bank village near Ramallah was torched early Sunday morning, in what locals believe was an attack by Israeli extremists.

Israeli NGO B’Tselem said that the owner of the house, a woman named Huda Abu Ghani who lives there alone, woke to hear voices in the early morning.At first she thought it was burglars trying to kick in her door, but then she said she heard people speaking Hebrew and windows being shattered.B’Tselem said that Abu Ghani told them that then someone threw a fire bomb on the balcony, which caught fire. The organization said that locals in Khirbat Abu Falah near Ramallah also reported seeing tire tracks leading to near the house.Graffiti sprayed on the outside of the house read “Revenge” and “Death to the Arabs,” as well as a Star of David symbol.The Judea and Samaria Police said Sunday morning that investigators from their nationalist crimes investigative unit – which probes so-called “price-tag” attacks by Jewish extremists against Arabs – were on the scene and had opened an investigation into the arson. They encountered no resistance from locals when they entered, police said.Earlier in the morning police said they had received a report about the arson from the IDF but had not yet been given security approval to send investigators in to examine the scene.The village where the arson took place Sunday morning is not far from a mosque in the village of Mughayir, which was torched on November 12 in a suspected price-tag attack.