World Bulletin / News Desk

Extremist Jewish settlers on Friday set fire to Palestinian farmland in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to a Palestinian official.

“A group of settlers from the Itamar settlement east of the West Bank city of Nablus set fire to farmland adjacent to the [Palestinian] town of Beit Foreek,” Ghassan Douglas, a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official said on Friday.

The fire, he said, had destroyed “dozens” of donums of Palestinian land. (One donum is roughly equivalent to 1,000 square meters.)

Palestinian residents of the area eventually managed to extinguish the blaze with the help of local civil-defense teams, Douglas said.

About 40,000 Jewish settlers live in 39 different settlements and settler outposts near Nablus, from which they stage frequent attacks on local Palestinians and their property.