RAMALLAH, Palestine

Two Palestinian women were injured Sunday in an attack by illegal Israeli settlers in the town of Deir Sharaf west of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a brief statement that its teams transported the 54-year-old and 42-year-old women to a nearby medical facility, without providing further details.

Tension has been running high across the West Bank due to Israel’s brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed nearly 43,000 people, mostly women and children, following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas last October.

At least 762 Palestinians have since been killed and around 6,300 injured by Israeli army fire in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The current escalation follows a July opinion by the International Court of Justice, which declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories “illegal” and called for the evacuation of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala