JERICHO: Israeli colonists Tuesday evening torched a sheep barn in Arab al-Mlaihat community, northwest of the occupied West Bank city of Jericho, according to a local activist.

Hasan Mlaihat, supervisor of the al-Baidar Organization in Defense of Bedouin Rights, said that a number of armed colonists barged their way into the community and hurled a bomb towards a sheep barn, setting it on fire.

According to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), the Arab al-Mlaihat come originally from Negev; people of this area were forcefully expelled to live in different places of the West Bank due to their nomadic nature. In the mid-eighties, people of al-Mlaihat were sent out from the al-Irqa area to Maghair al-Dair, which is only 7km away from it, claiming the area a military closed zone by Israel.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA