'My son was left bleeding' Survivors describe settler attack in West Bank

Survivors describe settler attack in West Bank

- Lorenzo Tondo Quique Kierszenbaum Sufian Taha Jerusalem

Survivors of an attack by violent Israeli settlers have described being "hunted" across a West Bank valley by men armed with pistols, rifles and batons, who beat them so badly that all 10 had to be taken to hospital.

They included a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, eight other Palestinians and an Israeli activist, who had three cameras, his phone, car keys and wallet stolen.

Moments before the attackers reached the activist, Avishay Mohar, he managed to remove and hide memory cards with photos documenting the early stages of the attack.

The assailants, some of them masked, descended on Palestinians dismantling the last homes in the village of Mughayyir al-Deir, east of Ramallah. Its residents had been forced out by Israeli settlers in an aggressive campaign that lasted less than a week.

A group had before established an illegal outpost, consisting of a basic shelter and a sheep pen, barely 100 metres from a Palestinian home.

Although settlers have long used illegal outposts to harass and displace Palestinians from their land, setting one up inside a village was unprecedented. Rights groups warned it was a sign of settler impunity and official tolerance for increasingly open and violent land grabs.

Images of the latest violence were later recovered by Mohar, a photographer who works for B'Tselem, one of Israel's most influential human rights groups.