An 18-month-old Palestinian baby was martyred and four family members were critically injured in a fire started by Zionist settlers in the West Bank

An 18-month-old Palestinian baby was martyred and four family members were critically injured in a fire started by Zionist settlers in the West Bank, Palestinian security officials said Friday.

Four settlers set a house on fire at the entrance of a Palestinian village,  near the northern city of Nablus , and scrawled graffiti on a wall before fleeing to a neighboring settlement, the sources said.

The Israeli occupation military said two homes had been set ablaze, killing a child, Ali Saad Dawabsha, and four family members wounded. It added that the graffiti had been written in Hebrew.

The military and army radio said two homes had been set ablaze by two masked men, with the child killed and four family members wounded.

Palestinian sources said those wounded included the toddler's parents -- mother Riham, 26, and father Saad -- as well as four-year-old brother Ahmed.
The mother was in critical condition with third-degree burns covering 90 percent of her body, an Israeli doctor told public radio.

The father had burns on 80 percent of his body and the son 60 percent, with all of their lives in danger.

The identity of the fourth person wounded as reported by the military was not immediately clear. Local media said one of the two homes set ablaze was empty.

The Palestine Liberation Organization said it held Netanyahu's government "fully responsible" for the attack, saying it was "a direct consequence of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to settler terrorism".

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called for an investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, while hundreds of Palestinians protested after leaving mosques following the main weekly prayers, with reports of sporadic clashes.

For his part, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon called the attack an "act of terrorism," claiming that such attacks would not be tolerated.

The attack further stoked tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu controversially approved 300 new settler homes in the West Bank.

Extreme-right Zionist activists have committed acts of vandalism and violence against Palestinians and Arab Israelis for years, attacking Christian and Muslim places of worship.

The attacks are known "price tag" violence -- a euphemism for hate crimes committed by Zionists aimed at Arab property.