Security forces probe price tag attack near Nablus

According to the IDF, some 100 Palestinian olive trees were cut down that belonged to the village of Al-Sawiya.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF
Alleged price tag attack near Nablus 370 (photo credit: Rabbis for Human Rights)
Alleged price tag attack near Nablus 370
(photo credit: Rabbis for Human Rights)
Security forces are investigating the possibility that Jewish extremists carried out a “price-tag” attack south of Nablus on Friday.
Around 100 olive trees belonging to Palestinians from E-Sawiya were cut down, the IDF said.
Vandals placed five metal barrels on a field near the olive grove. They then spray-painted the words “price tag, terror stones” on the barrels in Hebrew.
Separately, violence continued to break out in scattered part of the West Bank between Palestinians and security forces and between Palestinians and settlers.
In Abud, northwest of Ramallah on Friday, more than a thousand mourners gathered to bury Muhammad Asfour, 22, who died on Thursday. Soldiers had shot him the head with a rubber-coated bullet two weeks earlier during a protest in support of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Mourners and security forces on the outskirts of Abud clashed around the time of the funeral. Palestinians threw stones at the security personnel, who responded with riot dispersal means.
Separately, a stone lightly wounded a soldier, during violence that broke out with Palestinians near the Tekoa settlement, south of Jerusalem. Palestinians threw stones and firebombs at the soldiers, who responded with riot dispersal means, the army said.
Similarly, one of several stone-throwers wounded a soldier near Beitunya, on the western outskirts of Ramallah.
Near the Adai Ad outpost, outside the Shiloh settlement in Samaria, a fight broke out between Palestinians and security forces, in which one Palestinian was hit in the head by a tear gas canister and taken to a hospital in Ramallah, according to Rabbis for Human Rights field worker Zacharia Sadeh.
Settlers reported that before dawn on Friday, Palestinians stole sheep from the Adai Ad outpost and that settlers then went to the nearby village of Mughayir looking for them.
Sadeh said that settlers blocked off the entryway to the village. He further alleged that they attacked a Palestinian shepherd and stole his flock of sheep.
Palestinians, he said, were able to retrieve the sheep from the settlers, but only after five sheep had been killed and seven others injured.
Settlers said they knew nothing of such an attack.
The IDF reported that security forces responded to a report that clashes broke out between 150 Palestinians and 20 settlers in that area.
Ben Hartman contributed to this report.