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Fire engulfed the home of a key witness to an arson attack by suspected Israeli extremists that killed an 18-month Palestinian boy and his family last year, but the witness survived the blaze, police and residents said Sunday.
The home of Ibrahim Dawabsheh is in Duma, the same village in the occupied West Bank where a firebombing killed a Palestinian couple and their 18-month-old Palestinian son Ali Saad Dawabsha last July.
Jewish extremists burn the house of the only witness to the Dawabsha massacre in Duma. Israel covers up. #AIPAC2016 pic.twitter.com/72R2ibsQHp
— Palestine Info Centr (@palinfoen) March 20, 2016
Dawabsheh and his wife were woken up overnight by thick smoke, residents said. The young couple, relatives of the family killed in the July attack, were hospitalized for smoke inhalation and were said to be in shock.
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“At about 1:30am, I heard my brother and his wife call for help,” said Bashar Dawabsheh, who lives downstairs. “I went up to their floor and I saw the fire.”
Israeli authorities were investigating the cause of the fire on Sunday on the second-floor home. Residents believe it was started by Molotov cocktails being thrown at the building.
Breaking: House of Palestinian key witnesses in Duma fatal arson burned down overnight - @RavArik reports pic.twitter.com/tTLcMZBFIr
— Mairav Zonszein (@MairavZ) March 20, 2016
A bedroom window in the house was broken, with shattered glass inside, a journalist for AFP reported, with walls covered in soot and furniture charred, including the bed.
“The window was broken from the outside and flammable materials were found in the rubble,” Col. Malek Ali, fire chief for the nearby city of Nablus, told AFP.
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Another family member, Nasser Dawabsheh, said he believed the fire was intended to “send a message to the family and the village: ‘This witness must disappear’”.
On July 31, several Jewish extremist settlers set a family home in Duma on fire, killing 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and fatally wounding his parents. The couple’s five-year-old son, Ahmed, was the sole survivor.
The attack was called “terrorism” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government faced global outage over the attack and was accused of not doing enough to stop such attacks on Palestinians or hold those responsible to account.
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Two Israeli Jewish settlers were charged with murder and accomplice to murder and Ibrahim Dawabsheh, the man targeted in the Sunday attack, is a key witness in the ongoing trial.
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