Hebron /PNN/

Israeli forces today beat up a number of international solidarity activists in Masafer Yatta in the southern Hebron hills, according to local sources.

Coordinator of the Protection and Steadfastness Committee in Masafer Yatta, Fuad al-Amour, said the heavily-armed soldiers brutally assaulted a number of international activists while protesting the military drills close to and in al-Markez, and held two others for a long period.

The Israeli army has been conducting drills in al-Markez, one of 12 hamlets making up the Masafer Yatta, which rely heavily on animal husbandry as the main source of livelihood, for the second day in a row.

Al-Amour added that the army has built mock-ups as targets between the makeshift dwellings of the hamlet residents and has been conducting training with heavy weaponry, spreading panic among the residents.

In an interview with the Palestine News Network PNN, activist Abeer Al-Khatib said that the occupation soldiers attacked the Palestinians and tried to evacuate them from Khirbat Al-Majaz and Janba in Masafer Yatta, under the pretext that these areas are military zones as part of their continuous attempts to force our citizens to leave their homes and facilitate the process of seizing them.

Al-Khatib added that activists in the popular resistance and foreign solidarity activists tried to prevent the occupation forces from carrying out the evacuation, as the occupation soldiers suppressed them, dragged a number of them, and attacked them in a barbaric and barbaric way, in an attempt to terrorize them.

Al-Khatib stressed that these practices will not discourage popular resistance activists from continuing their struggle with the occupation forces and settlers.