News / Palestine

UN condemns attack on Palestine Duma witness house

Monday, 21 March 2016 10:07 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 21 March 2016 10:05 AM ]

The AFP photo shows a Palestinian man outside a burnt-out house belonging to a key witness to an arson attack carried out last year by Israeli settlers that killed a Palestinian family, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank village of Duma, on March 20, 2016.

The United Nations has “strongly condemned” an arson attack against the house of the sole witness to an Israeli settler's deadly attack last year against a Palestinian family.

UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Robert Piper, made the remarks in a statement released on Monday.

"I strongly condemn today’s arson attack by suspected Jewish extremists on the home of Palestinian Ibrahim Dawabsheh in the occupied West Bank village of Duma,” Piper said.

He also warned that the attack could have resulted in loss of life just as the attack against his relatives in the same village did back in late July last year.

Piper further urged “Israel, as the occupying power to investigate this incident promptly and fully” and to “bring the perpetrators to justice and to take all possible steps to ensure that vulnerable Palestinian communities” are protected.

He added that allowing “such acts to foster hatred and violence” would only result in more tragedies.

Residents say Ibrahim and his wife were awakened in the early hours of Sunday by thick smoke after attackers threw Molotov cocktails into the house, located southeast of the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. They were hospitalized for smoke inhalation.

"The window was broken from the outside and flammable materials were found in the rubble," Colonel Malek Ali, the fire department chief for the nearby city of Nablus, said.

Another relative of the family said he believed the recent attack was intended to deliver a message to the family and the village.

Mohammed, the father of Saad Dawabsha, at the family's burnt-out home in the West Bank village of Duma, the day after his son's funeral on August 9, 2015. (AFP photo)

At the time of the attack, which claimed the lives of an 18-month-old baby and his parents, Tel Aviv said the perpetrators would be punished, apparently condemning the assault, but the pledge only amounted to an “empty rhetoric,” according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.

The attack last year prompted international outcry slamming the Israeli regime for its failure to address the acts of aggression by settlers.

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