Calling it a "criminal and terrorist act," the U.S. Ambassador toIsraelhas demanded the country "aggressively investigate" the killing of an American citizen who wasbeaten to death by Israeli settlerswhile visiting relatives in theoccupied West Bank. Sayfollah Musallet, known as Saif, was "brutally beaten to death" in the town ofal-Mazra'a ash-Sharqiya, north ofRamallahon Friday, his family said in a statement on social media and confirmed to NBC News. They said a group of settlers blocked an ambulance from reaching their relative for about three hours and he died before he could get to a hospital. Mike Huckabee, the American Ambassador to Israel said in aposton X on Tuesday that he had "asked Israel to aggressively investigate the murder" of Musallet who had traveled from his home in Tampa, Florida to visit his mom, brother and sister. "There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act," he added. His comments came two days after Musallet's friends and family paid their final respects to him at a funeral on Sunday,video published by The Associated Pressshowed. Among the mourners was the 20-year-old's father, who raced from Florida to be there, among them. "We demand justice against these settler terrorists," Musallet's father, identified as Kamil Musallet told The AP. He called on the U.S. government to "do something about it." A second man identified as Mohammed al-Shalabi, 23 was also killed in the incident on Friday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was not immediately clear how the events leading up to their deaths unfolded. The Israel Defense Forces said Friday it was aware of reports of a Palestinian civilian killed and a number of Palestinians injured and it said the matter was being looked into by Israeli authorities. Police told NBC News that several people from "both sides" had been detained at the scene on suspicion of involvement in acts of violence that a joint investigation had been launched by the Israel Police and IDF Military Police. Asked for an update on the probe on Wednesday, the IDF repeated that an investigation had been launched by the Israel Police and the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division. The Israel Police did not immediately respond when asked for comment. A spokesperson for the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musallet's killing comes amid a deadly rise in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. A United Nations report in March warned that violence had "increased in a climate of continuing impunity." Hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers live in sweeping settlements across the West Bank that the international communitywidely considers to be illegal. More than 960 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the Hamas led attacks on Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, according to a database maintained by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), marking a sharp increase from previous years. In the year leading up to the Hamas attacks, just over 250 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank according to OCHA's data. Settlers rarely face legal consequences for violence against Palestinians, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, with more than 93% of investigations between 2005 and 2023 closed without an indictment and only 3% leading to a conviction, according to areportit published last year.
