A group of Zionist settlers uprooted and destroyed at least 1,000 olive trees in the town of Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on Sunday morning.
Abdullah Awad, a member of the Turmus Ayya municipal council, said settlers accompanied by a bulldozer from the illegal Shilo settlement stormed the al‑Sahel area at dawn, leveling farmland and uprooting long‑standing, fruit‑bearing olive trees across roughly 50 dunums of land owned by Palestinian families from the town.
For nearly three years, settler groups have been attacking the al-Sahel area of the town, blocking farmers from reaching their lands and repeatedly destroying olive groves, according to Awad.
Settlers have uprooted nearly 25,000 olive trees in the area in recent years.
The area is considered one of the town’s most important agricultural basins and spans about 6,000 dunums of land.
Awad said the area faces daily settler assaults that threaten residents’ livelihoods and prevent them from cultivating their swaths of land.
Awad called for urgent action by official authorities and human rights groups to save the al-Sahel area of the town from what he called the “massacre” targeting it.
On April 26, settlers from the Adi Ad settlement cut down around 400 olive trees in Turmus Ayya.
