Attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinians in West Bank must stop: US

Attacks by “extremist settlers” against Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank “must stop,” US Secretary of Defines, Lloyd Austin, said on Monday, Anadolu Agency reports.

“Attacks by extremist settlers against the Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and those committing the violence must be held accountable,” Austin said at a news conference with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, in Tel Aviv.

Austin is on a Middle East tour to Bahrain, Qatar and Israel. He and Gallant discussed the ongoing war in Gaza, the protection of civilians and the recent attacks on vessels in the Red Sea by Yemeni Houthi rebels.

“I also discussed the need to take urgent action to stabilise the West Bank,” said the US Defence chief.

Reiterating that US support for Israeli security is “unshakable”, he said Washington would keep pushing “relentlessly” for the safe return of hostages in the Gaza Strip.

Austin emphasised that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza, pummelled by weeks of Israeli attacks, is both “a moral duty and a strategic imperative”, while vowing to “continue to urge the protection of civilians during conflict and to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.”

Israel’s air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since the 7 October attacks by Hamas have killed more than 19,450 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to health authorities in the enclave.

The war has left Gaza in ruins with half of the coastal territory’s housing damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2 million people displaced within the densely-populated enclave, amid shortages of food and clean water.

Nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack, while more than 130 hostages remain in captivity.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

READ: Israel demolishes Palestinian homes, electricity network in Occupied West Bank