Several Palestinian young men were injured last night during clashes with the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) who stormed the eastern area of Nablus City.
Local sources said that dozens of young men blocked roads in the eastern area with rocks containers and burning tires and confronted Israeli soldiers and their patrol vehicles by throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at them.
The skirmishes started after Israeli troops aboard military vehicles including a bulldozer stormed the eastern area of Nablus and spread through its streets in order to provide protection for buses and cars carrying dozens of settlers who came for rituals at Joseph’s Tomb.
Resistance fighters from the Lions’ Den armed group also opened fire at the Israeli forces and detonated explosive devices at their vehicles before the settlers managed to reach Joseph’s Tomb under military escort.
Local sources said that the IOF fired tear gas canisters intensively and rubber bullets at young protesters homes and journalists during the clashes that happened in different streets of eastern Nablus after an Israeli bulldozer blocked Amman street with mounds of dirt.
They added that the young men poured oil on one of the roads and blocked it with burning tires as IOF vehicles started to enter the eastern area of Nablus before embarking on showering them with firecrackers stones and Molotov cocktails.
Later the Red Crescent said that its ambulance crews provided medical assistance for a young man after he was run over by a military jeep another one with a bullet injury in his face and a third citizen who suffered a fracture after a tear gas canister hit his leg adding that they were evacuated to Rafidia Hospital.
Red Crescent paramedics also provided on-site medical help for five citizens who suffered from rubber bullet injuries and 35 others who suffered from their exposure to tear gas during the events.
Meanwhile dozens of settlers gathered inside the mausoleum of Joseph’s Tomb where they danced sang and screamed loudly and hysterically for long hours causing a disturbance to the local residents living around it.
Israeli troops and settlers storm every week the eastern area of Nablus to perform rituals at the tomb which they claim to be the resting-place of the biblical patriarch Joseph while locals and Palestinian historians affirm that the grave belongs to a local medieval Muslim Sheikh called Yousef al-Duwaik.
