RAMALLAH, May 15 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian teenager was killed by Israeli army fire on Friday, while Israeli settlers torched a mosque and two vehicles in the West Bank, according to Palestinian sources.
Palestinian security sources told Xinhua that Fahd Oweis, 16, was shot dead by Israeli forces in the town of al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus. The sources added that Israeli forces withheld his body.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a statement that Israeli forces obstructed and assaulted its crews while they were attempting to reach the scene.
The incident came hours after Israeli forces opened fire late Thursday on a vehicle in the same town and blocked ambulance access, according to local sources.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Friday that troops were conducting "a targeted counterterrorism operation" in the area where soldiers identified three "terrorists who hurled rocks toward Israeli vehicles on a central road, endangering lives."
"The soldiers fired toward the terrorists and eliminated a masked terrorist. A hit on an additional terrorist was identified, and IDF soldiers have begun pursuing him and the third terrorist," it said.
In a separate incident, Palestinian security sources said that Israeli settlers stormed the village of Jibiya, northwest of Ramallah in the central West Bank, at dawn on Friday, torching a mosque and two vehicles and spray-painting what the sources described as racist slogans on walls.
The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs condemned the attack in a statement, describing the burning of mosques as "a cowardly terrorist act."
A 2025 UN report said that more than 700,000 Israeli settlers and 3.3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Between May 5 and 11, the UN documented at least 33 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians that resulted in casualties or property damage, bringing the total number of such attacks documented since the beginning of 2026 to over 800 across over 220 communities. ■
