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JENIN (Ma‘an) 13 July

A Palestinian teenager sustained bruises on Wednesday after Israeli settlers pelted his car with stones near the site of the former Israeli settlement of Homesh, which was evacuated in 2005.

One of the car's passengers, Kamal Abu Awwad, said that he and some friends were driving from Nablus to Jenin when they saw a man, who they assumed to be a hitchhiker, waiting by the roadside near the evacuated Homesh settlement.

As they approached the man began shouting at them and five armed settlers emerged and began throwing stones at the car, Awwad told Ma'an.

Basim Mousa Al-Khatib was hit in the head with a stone.

“If we had stopped, we would have been killed. We heard them loading their guns which they pointed at us. It was really a narrow escape,” Awwad said.

Al-Khatib was taken to a public hospital in Jenin where medics said that his injury was a superficial wound.

A recent report by the Palestinian Authority found that settler violence against Palestinians had increased 'dramatically' in June 2011.

Annual figures compiled by Israeli rights group Yesh Din have repeatedly shown that nine out of 10 police investigations about settler offenses fail to lead to a prosecution.