State prosecutors indicted two 16-year-old boys on Monday after they allegedly broke into a Palestinian man’s home, set fire to the entrance and proceeded to attack him ahead of this year’s Jerusalem Day Flag March.

The annual parade through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter has frequently seen marchers skirmish with Palestinian residents and shop owners in the area, who typically close their places of business and shutter themselves inside their homes to make way for the nationalist march.

The two defendants were said to have roved around the Muslim Quarter alongside several other youths on the morning of May 26, hours before the parade began.

They approached the complainant as he was in his courtyard and shouted curses at him, calling him a “dirty Arab” and calling for “death to Arabs,” prosecutors said.

The teenagers then climbed over the gate into the homeowner’s yard and tried to set his house on fire. One of the defendants broke his window with a stick, while the other took a towel from the laundry, set it alight, and threw it toward his home entrance.

When the Palestinian resident tried to stop the two teenagers from setting the entrance to his house on fire, one beat him with a wooden stick, causing minor injuries. The youths also threw rocks at his house.

“As a result of the incident, significant damage was caused to the house, including a broken window, scorched wall [and] damage to electrical cables,” read the prosecutors’ indictment filed Monday morning in the Jerusalem Juvenile District Court.

Officers had initially been probing three teenagers in connection with the attack; however, charges were only filed against two of them.

One suspect was arrested on the spot the morning of the attack. Police arrested the other two a few days later, after identifying them through security camera footage of the incident, Haaretz reported.

The defendants — who remain in detention — face charges of arson, racially motivated aggravated assault, racially motivated willful damage and trespassing with the intent to commit a crime.

Prosecutors in the State Attorney’s office requested that the court extend the defendants’ remand until the end of legal proceedings against them. Since they are minors, their names and identifying details are barred from publication.