Sitting around a fire in the hills of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Ibrahim Abu Alyah and some friends stood watch over his herd in the aftermath of a settler raid on their village.

“We are here so that we can put away the sheep and tell people to protect their homes in case settlers come,” Abu Alyah told AFP.

After 14-year-old Israeli herder Benjamin Achimeir went missing on April 12 in the nearby illegal settler outpost of Malachi Hashalom, dozens of Jewish settlers stormed his village of Al-Mughayyir, north of Ramallah.

Armed with rifles and Molotov cocktails, they set houses ablaze, killed sheep, wounded 23 people and displaced 86, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA.

One Palestinian was also killed in the violence.

Abu Alyah, a shepherd, lost “20 or 30 sheep” and the cash he made from selling milk products when his house was set alight.

Al-Mughayyir mayor Amin Abu Alyah said the settlers, who were part of the search party for Achimeir, burnt “everything they found in front of them”, including houses, a bulldozer and vehicles.

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