Family of US-Palestinian man killed in West Bank demand Washington investigation
Saif al-Din Kamil Abdul Karim Musalat was beaten to death yesterday in Sinjil, a village north of Ramallah, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Musalat, born and based in Florida, travelled to the West Bank last month to spend time with relatives, his family said in a statement issued by lawyer Diana Halum following the deadly attack.
The Palestinian health ministry said a second man, Mohammed Rizq Hussein al-Shalabi, 23, died after being shot during the attack and 'left to bleed for hours'.
Israel has occupied since 1967,
Musalat's family said they were 'devastated' at his death, describing the 20-year-old as a 'kind, hard-working and deeply respected' man who was deeply connected to his Palestinian heritage.
They said he was 'protecting his family's land from settlers who were attempting to steal it'.
According to the family's statement, settlers allegedly blocked an ambulance and paramedics from reaching Musalat as he lay injured, and he died before making it to hospital.
His death was 'an unimaginable nightmare and injustice that no family should ever have to face', they added.
We demand the US State Department lead an immediate investigation and hold the Israeli settlers who killed Saif accountable for their crimes. We demand justice.
The Israeli military said its forces, police and border police were dispatched to the scene and used 'riot dispersal means' to break up the confrontation.
In a statement, the military said clashes broke out between Palestinians and Israelis yesterday after rocks were thrown at Israeli civilians adjacent to the village of Sinjil, lightly injuring two.
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It said the ensuing 'violent confrontation… included vandalism of Palestinian property, arson, physical clashes, and rock hurling'.
'We are aware of reports regarding a Palestinian civilian killed and a number of injured Palestinians,' it said, adding that the incidents were being looked into.
A spokesman for the governning Palestinian Authority ministry, Annas Abu El Ezz, told AFP that Musalat 'died after being severely beaten all over his body by settlers in the town of Sinjil, north of Ramallah, this afternoon'.
AFP footage from Ramallah showed his body being carried through the streets draped in a Palestinian flag and flanked by around a hundred mourners.
'The young man was injured and remained so for four hours. The army prevented us from reaching him and did not allow us to take him away,' said Abdul Samad Abdul Aziz, from the nearby village of Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya.
'When we finally managed to reach him, he was taking his last breath.'
A week earlier, AFP journalists witnessed clashes between dozens of Israeli settlers and Palestinians in Sinjil, where a march against settler attacks on nearby farmland had been due to take place.
Israeli authorities in the West Bank recently erected a high fence cutting off parts of Sinjil from Road 60, which runs through the West Bank from north to south.
Violence in the territory has surged since the outbreak of the war in Gaza triggered by the Palestinian militant group Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel.
Since then, Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank have killed at least 954 Palestinians — many of them militants, but also scores of civilians — according to Palestinian health ministry figures.
At least 36 Israelis, including both troops and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations, according to Israeli official figures.
© Agence France-Presse
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