Israeli occupiers set fire to a Palestinian home in the Hebron governorate in the occupied West Bank on Thursday while a mother and her daughter were inside, according to local sources.
Aliya al-Nawajaa, the owner of the burned home, told Anadolu Agency that five masked occupiers attacked her house at dawn in the Khirbet al-Fara area of the city of Yatta.
She said one of the occupiers opened the window of the bedroom where she was sleeping with her daughter and threatened her and her family.
The attackers then set fire to the bedroom, causing the flames to spread rapidly before she could put them out, Nawajaa said.
She added that she immediately woke her daughter and they barely managed to flee the house safely.
Nawajaa said local residents and neighbors did not wake up immediately because of the early hour, prompting her to call her husband, who was not at home, to seek help.
Separately, the Israeli army began moving mobile homes to a settlement outpost established on Mount Tarousa, west of the city of Dura, southwest of Hebron, according to local sources.
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The sources said Israeli heavy machinery began transporting new mobile homes to the outpost early Thursday as part of a “plan to expand settlements in the area.”
Israeli army vehicles accompanied the machinery during the operation, they added.
Since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza in October 2023, Israeli forces and occupiers have intensified attacks against Palestinians and their property across the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.
The attacks have included the killing and wounding of Palestinians, arrests, the demolition of homes and other structures, the burning of mosques and vehicles, the destruction of agricultural land – preventing farmers from accessing their fields – plus forced displacement, and the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land.
Palestinians warn that the attacks are meant to pave the way for Israel to annex the West Bank, which would undermine the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state as envisaged in relevant UN resolutions.
Israel was established in 1948 on Palestinian lands seized by armed Zionist groups that carried out massacres and displaced at least 750,000 Palestinians, before Israel occupied the remaining Palestinian territories and refused to withdraw from them.
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