Illegal Israeli settlers assault elderly blind Palestinian in occupied West Bank

Illegal Israeli settlers assaulted an elderly blind Palestinian on Sunday, beating him with sticks in the area of Bani Naim, east of Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, local sources said.

Hussein al-Khudur, 81, was attacked by a group of illegal settlers while on his land in the Bani Naim wilderness area, sources told Anadolu. He was later taken to a hospital in a private vehicle.

The attack came amid a sharp rise in assaults by the Israeli army and illegal settlers in the West Bank.

According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a government agency, Israeli forces and illegal settlers carried out 1,872 attacks during January alone.

The commission said in a Tuesday statement that Israeli forces were responsible for 1,404 of the attacks, while illegal settlers carried out 468. Most attacks were recorded in Hebron with 415 assaults, followed by Ramallah and al-Bireh with 374, Nablus with 328, and Jerusalem with 201.

Israel has intensified its military operations in the West Bank since launching its war on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 8, 2023, including killings, arrests, forced displacement and settlement expansion, a trajectory Palestinians say is aimed at paving the way for the formal annexation of the occupied territory.

At least 1,112 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, about 11,500 wounded, and more than 21,000 detained during that period, according to Palestinian estimates.

The International Court of Justice declared Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory illegal in a landmark opinion in July 2024 and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.