An 18-month-old baby was burnt to death and several other family members seriously injured after Israeli extremist set fire to a Palestinian home in the occupied West Bank Friday.
Police officials said the house in Duma, a small village near the city of Nablus, was torched while the family was sleeping and graffiti in Hebrew reading “revenge” was scribbled on the wall outside.
The incident was described as “a terror attack” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A helicopter was deployed to the home to rush to hospital the parents of the dead child and his four-year-old brother, officials said.
According to Reuters, this was the worst attack by Israeli extremists since a Palestinian teenager was torched to death in Jerusalem a year ago. That followed the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinian militants in the West Bank, which led to the indiscriminate 51-day bloody Israeli attack on Gaza.
A witness, Ibrahim Dawabsheh, told Reuters he heard people shouting for help from the house and rushed to it. "I saw two masked men outside," he added.
"We found the parents outside with burns, they said there was another son in the house, we brought him out and then they said there was another boy inside, but we couldn't reach the bedroom because of the fire. He was left inside until rescue forces came," Dawabsheh said.
Other witnesses told Al Jazeera they saw at least four Israeli Jewish settlers running away from the scene. There are at least three illegal Israeli settlements near Duma village. The Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law.
Netanyahu said he was shocked. "This is a terrorist attack. Israel takes firm action against terrorism, no matter who its perpetrators are," he said in a statement, adding that "all means" would be used to bring the assailants to justice.
Nabil Abu Rdainah , a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, blamed Israel for the attack.
"Such a crime would not have occurred if the Israeli government did not insist on pursuing settlements and protecting settlers," he said in a statement on the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.
The United Nations recently reported that at least 120 attacks by Israeli settlers have been documented in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of this year.
Palestinians seek a state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.