Off the wire
• Spanish treasury places 3.507 bln euros on market  • Austria unveils plan for integration of asylum seekers  • 1st LD: U.S. House passes stringent Syrian refugees bill despite White House veto threat  • Roundup: British Foreign Secretary optimistic about solution to Cyprus issue  • Ukraine joins EU's Creative Europe program  • Italy not to set foot in Syria: FM  • Germany launches investigations after canceled football match  • World Bank earmarks 560 mln USD in loans for Ukraine road project  • Poland hosts military exercise of four Visegrad group countries  • Nine arrested in Brussels in connection with Paris terror investigation: prosecutor  
You are here: 　 Home

Senior UN official briefs Security Council on violence between Israelis, Palestinians

Xinhua, November 20, 2015 Adjust font size:

The UN special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, on Thursday briefed the UN Security Council about the continuing violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

He told the 15-nation UN body that over the past month, there were 35 reported attacks, including stabbings or attempted stabbings, shootings or car-rammings, by Palestinians against Israelis in Israel and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

They left six Israelis dead and 36 injured, including in an attack on Thursday in Tel Aviv, he said. Meanwhile, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 11 Palestinians were killed and over 3,500 injured in clashes across the West Bank and Gaza in recent weeks.

Mladenov said that in recent days, the epicentre of violence has moved to Hebron, which like Jerusalem, has holy sites revered by both Muslims and Jews and has been a Cause of friction for decades.

He said that he plans to return soon to Hebron with the UN Country Team to discuss with the governor and the mayor what programmes can be initiated to support the recovery of the area and community dialogue.

On Nov. 6, violence flared up throughout the West Bank with at least six Palestinians wounded in clashes with Israeli forces and one Israeli injured in a Palestinian stabbing attack, officials said.

A Palestinian man stabbed a 40-year-old Israeli man outside a supermarket in the Jewish settlement of Sha'ar Binyamin, between Ramallah and Jerusalem, a military spokesperson said in a statement.

In Hebron in early November, Israeli troops injured at least five Palestinian amidst clashes in the flashpoint city, Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.

The clashes broke out as Palestinian worshipers left the Wasaya al-Rasoul Mosque, which was surrounded by Israeli forces, after the Friday prayers.

With Hebron becoming a flashpoint of violence in the past two weeks, Israel has been imposing harsher restrictions on the movement of the Palestinian residents, Israeli human rights watchdog B'tselem said.

The measures include a closure on the neighborhood of Tel Rumeidah, home to 50 Palestinian families, where residents are allowed to enter only after security checks, and locals who are not listed as residents in the military's records are denied access, the watchdog said. Endit