Dozens of Palestinian citizens were injured last night and at dawn Wednesday during clashes with the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) who stormed the eastern area of Nablus City.
Local sources said that Red Crescent paramedics provided on-site medical help for at least 100 citizens who suffered from inhaling tear gas and evacuated some wounded citizens to hospitals including one with a serious bullet injury.
They said that scores 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 firecrackers 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 during the events.
Eyewitnesses that the IOF fired tear gas canisters intensively and rubber bullets at young protesters paramedics journalists and homes during the clashes that happened in different streets of eastern Nablus.
Consequently one house reportedly caught fire and some cars sustained damage during the skirmishes with the Israeli forces.
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.
