Hawzah News Agency –Several Palestinians Wednesday overnight sustained injuries from Israeli military gunfire and dozens others suffocated as Israeli forces stormed Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus city, according to local sources.

They said that Israeli forces escorted a convoy of buses packed with hundreds of fanatic Jewish settlers into the site, located in the Palestinian-controlled area, sparking confrontations with Palestinian residents.

The soldiers opened fire on Palestinians protesting the raid and attempting to block settlers’ access to the site.

Director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s (PRCS) Emergency Department, Ahmad Jibril, said that medics provided treatment for three protestors who were hit by rubber-coated steel bullets, including one hit in the chest, and rushed them to hospital.

He added that 33 others were treated at the scene from the effects of tear gas suffocation.

Settlers repeatedly break into Joseph’s Tomb, located in a densely Palestinian populated area in Nablus, provoking chaos and confrontation with local residents.

The site of Joseph’s Tomb is contentious. Palestinians believe the site to be the funerary monument to Sheikh Yousef Dweikat, a local religious figure, while Israeli settlers believe it to belong to the Biblical Patriarch Joseph.

Israel uses the Jewish nationalist name “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the occupied West Bank to reinforce its bogus claims to the territory and to give them a veneer of historical and religious legitimacy.

There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law.