Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday attacked AFP journalists reporting on tension with Palestinians, in violence that left at least five people injured, the reporters and medics said.
A three-person team from the international news agency had travelled to the village of Jannatah near Bethlehem to report on Israeli activists who conduct solidarity visits to support Palestinians facing harassment by Israeli settlers, who recently blocked a road in the area.
After an altercation broke out between the settlers and activists, the Israeli military ordered journalists to leave what it called a "closed military zone", at which point two additional cars full of settlers swooped in.
The settlers, many of them children, threw stones towards the journalists and activists. One AFP journalist ducked a stone but then a child settler struck him in the chin with a stick, causing minor bleeding, he said.
The AFP journalists returned to see their two parked cars both damaged, with back windshields smashed in and tyres punctured. Activists' cars suffered similar damage.
Five people were treated for injuries, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said, with AFP journalists reporting seeing at least one Israeli activist taken in a Palestinian ambulance.
During the clash an Israeli soldier temporarily seized the camera of a video journalist but handed it back afterward, the AFP journalists said.
An Israeli military spokesperson said that the temporary confiscation of the camera "is currently being reviewed".
Israeli police joined the military to collect evidence on the damage to cars and "a police investigation has been opened into the incident", the military spokesperson said.
More than 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, home to around three million Palestinians, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government advancing more construction ahead of October 27 elections.
Violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers has increased dramatically since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel
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