Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked a pair of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, setting fire to vehicles and other property before clashing with Israeli soldiers sent to halt the rampage, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

It was the latest in a series of attacks by young settlers in the West Bank.

Israeli police said four Israelis were arrested in what it described as "extremist violence," while the Israeli military said four Palestinians were wounded.

Police and Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency said they were investigating.

Videos on social media showed two charred trucks engulfed in flames, with a nearby building on fire.

Amjad Amer of Al-Juneidi for Dairy and Food Products said the attack was carried out as a truck was coming back from the distribution line.

"It was still halfway through when they came in directly behind it."

"They took advantage of the gate (opening), they all entered. So about more than 50 or 60 people went in, and that’s just those who were inside the company’s premises, not counting the large group that was outside," he said.

Settler violence has surged since the war in Gaza erupted two years ago.

The attacks have intensified in recent weeks as Palestinians harvest their olive trees in an annual ritual.

The U.N. humanitarian office last week reported more Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in October than in any other month since it began keeping track in 2006.

There were over 260 attacks, the office said.

Palestinians and human rights workers accuse the Israeli army and police of failing to halt attacks by settlers.

"This can’t happen, it just can’t. As a person, I have the right to live in safety," Beit Lid resident Mahmoud Edeis said.

"It can’t be that we keep living our whole lives in a state of fear and danger."

Israel’s government is dominated by West Bank settlers, and the police force is overseen by Cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hardline settler leader.

In Tuesday’s incident, the army said soldiers initially responded to settler attacks in the villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf.

It said the settlers fled to a nearby industrial zone and attacked soldiers sent to the scene and damaged a military vehicle.

Palestinian official Muayyad Shaaban, who heads the government’s Commission against the Wall and Settlements, said the settlers set fire to four dairy trucks, farmland, tin shacks and tents belonging to a Bedouin community.

He said the attacks were part of a campaign to drive Palestinians from their land and accused Israel of giving the settlers protection and immunity.

AP video shot by Aref Tuffaha