Vandals set fire to the entrance of a West Bank mosque on Monday, damaging the door, in an attack that villagers blamed on Jewish settlers.
Residents of the Palestinian village of Orif, near the city of Nablus, said a group of settlers from a nearby settlement came to the mosque before dawn, poured gasoline on an old carpet near the mosque’s door, and set it ablaze.
“The settlers tried to break into the mosque, but it was locked,” Orif resident Issam al-Safadi told Reuters. “So they settled with burning the old carpet and the door.”
Israeli rights group B’tselem says vigilante settler groups are suspected of vandalizing at least 10 mosques in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since 2009.
Update: See “Israeli settlers burn mosque in Palestinian village”, Press TV, 19 November 2012