ISRAELI settlers killed more than 60 animals in a town north of Jericho in the Jordan Valley yesterday, while injuring many more, local officials reported.

The livestock, including sheep, goats and cattle, died after illegal settlers sprayed pastures where the animals were known to graze in the town of al-Auja, farmer Ahmad al-Zawahra told the Palestinian Wafa news agency.

Head of al-Auja municipality’s water department Jihad Shabnat said that he expected the number of dead livestock to rise as many of the surviving animals were in a critical condition.

It is the latest in a string of attacks on Palestinian land by illegal settlers. Olive trees and other crops were destroyed in arson attacks in Nablus over the weekend as a gang from the nearby illegal Yitzhar colony set fire to agricultural land.

The escalating attacks on Palestinian farms are apparent attempts to force the existing population off their land to allow for illegal-settlement expansion nearby.

The Jordan Valley, which is a fertile strip of land running west along the Jordan River, is home to about 65,000 Palestinians and makes up approximately 30 per cent of the West Bank.

Israel has transferred at least 11,000 of its citizens to the Jordan Valley, in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Some 46 per cent of the region has been designated a closed military zone since 1967, with Palestinian families forcibly displaced as part of an ethnic-cleansing operation.

Israel is seeking to annex the region under US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century,” which was announced in Washington in January.

Israel set a date of July 1 to begin the process.

But plans have stalled due to apparent disagreements between Washington and Tel Aviv on how to proceed, as well as Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s domestic problems, with mass protests demanding his resignation over corruption as well as the government’s poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.