MUKHMAS, West Bank (AP) — Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank shot and killed a Palestinian-American during an attack on a village, the Palestinian Health Ministry and a witness said Thursday.

Raed Abu Ali, a resident of the village of Mukhmas, said a group of settlers came to the community Wednesday afternoon and tried to attack a farmer, prompting clashes after residents intervened. Israeli forces later arrived, and during the violence armed settlers killed 19-year-old Nasrallah Abu Siyam and injured several others.

Abu Ali said that the army shot tear gas, sound grenades and live ammunition. Israel's military acknowledged using what it called “riot dispersal methods” after receiving reports of Palestinians throwing rocks but denied that its forces fired during the clashes.

“When the settlers saw the army, they were encouraged and started shooting live bullets,” Abu Ali said. He added that they clubbed those injured with sticks after they had fallen to the ground.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed Abu Siyam's death from critical wounds sustained Wednesday afternoon near the village east of Ramallah.

Abu Siyam’s killing is the latest in a surge in violence by extremist settlers in the West Bank, which killed 240 people last year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Seventeen Israelis were killed over the same period. The Palestinian Authority’s Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission said Abu Siyam was the first Palestinian killed by settlers in 2026.

Mukhmas and its surrounding area — most of which lies under Israeli civil and military administration — have become a hotspot for settler attacks, including arson and assaults, as well as the construction of outposts that Israeli law considers illegal.

The Israeli military said late Wednesday that unnamed suspects shot at Palestinians, who were later evacuated for medical treatment. It did not say whether any were arrested.

Abu Siyam's mother told The Associated Press that he was an American citizen, making him the second Palestinian-American to be killed by Israeli settlers in less than a year.

The U.S. Embassy did not respond to questions on Thursday.

Palestinians and rights groups say authorities routinely fail to prosecute settlers or hold them accountable for violence. Under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, investigations into settler attacks have plummeted, according to the Israeli rights group Yesh Din.

The U.N. human rights office on Thursday accused Israel of war crimes and said practices that displace Palestinians in the occupied West Bank “raise concerns over ethnic cleansing.”

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, citing findings collected November 2024 to October 2025, said Israel was engaged in “concerted and accelerating effort to consolidate annexation” while maintaining a system “to maintain oppression and domination of Palestinians.”

It said Israeli military operations in the northern West Bank “employed means and methods designed for warfare” including lethal airstrikes and forcibly transferring civilians from their homes. It also said Israel “forbade” residents from returning to their homes in northern West Bank refugee camps. The operation, which Israel said was aimed against militants, has displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians.

The report also accused Palestinian security forces of using unnecessary lethal force in the same areas, killing at least eight people, and noted that the Palestinian Authority had engaged in “intimidation, detention and ill-treatment of journalists, human rights defenders and other individuals deemed critical of its rule.”

Neither Israel’s Foreign Ministry nor the Palestinian Authority responded to requests for comment. Israel has repeatedly accused the U.N. rights office of anti-Israel bias.

Last year, the U.N. human rights monitor warned of what it called “an unfolding genocide in Gaza” with “conditions of life increasingly incompatible with (Palestinians’) continued existence.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists said that dozens of Palestinian journalists who were detained in Israel during the war in Gaza experienced terrible conditions, including physical assaults, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation, sexual violence and medical neglect.

CPJ has documented the detention of at least 94 Palestinian journalists and one media worker during the war in Gaza. It covers 32 journalists and one media worker from Gaza, 60 from the West Bank, and two from Israel. Thirty of the journalists are still in custody, CPJ said.

The report found that half of the journalists detained were never charged with a crime and were held under Israel’s administrative detention system, which allows for suspects deemed a security risk to be held for six months and can be renewed indefinitely.

Israel’s prison services did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the report, but had rejected a similar report in January about conditions for Palestinian prisoners as “false allegations,” contending it operates lawfully, is subject to oversight and reviews complaints.

The vast destruction across Gaza will take at least seven years just to remove the rubble, according to the United Nations Development Program.

Alexander De Croo, the former Belgian prime minister who just returned from Gaza, said that the UNDP had removed just 0.5% of the rubble and people in Gaza are experiencing “the worst living conditions that I have ever seen.”

De Croo said 90% of Gaza’s 2.2 million people live in “very, very rudimentary tents” in the middle of the rubble, which poses health dangers and a danger from exploding weapons.

He said UNDP has been able to build 500 improved housing units, and has 4,000 more that are ready, but estimates the true need is 200,000 to 300,000 units. The units are meant to be used temporarily while reconstruction takes place. He called on Israel to expand access for goods and items needed for reconstruction and the private sector to begin development.

___ Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Edith Lederer at the United Nations and Sam Metz in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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