A Palestinian accuses the suspects of trying to sexually assault him in the attack that occurred days after Hamas attacks; Israeli activists say they were also victims of the same group; The Israeli army expels the responsible officer and opens an investigation.

A group of Israeli soldiers and settlers were accused of carrying out a brutal attack on three Palestinians in the central West Bank last week, days after the attack carried out by Hamas on October 7 in southern Israel.

The victims told Haaretz on Thursday that they were assaulted for hours on October 12, when they were beaten, stripped, bound and photographed. The assailants urinated on two of them, and extinguished cigarettes on the body of one of them, while the other was sexually assaulted by one of the attackers.

The Israeli army said that the military police opened an investigation into the incident and the commanding officer was removed from his post.

The incident was part of a broader escalation in violence across the West Bank since the outbreak of the Gaza war.

The incident occurred in the small Palestinian community of Wadi al-Siq, about 16 kilometers east of Ramallah, which Haaretz newspaper said had been largely evacuated in recent weeks after an escalation in settler attacks on the shepherds' village.

Soldiers from the Civil Administration who later arrived at the scene released the three Palestinians in the early evening after they had been detained for approximately eight hours.