Israelis and Palestinians held funerals Wednesday for teenagers killed in a shooting targeting Israelis and an army raid on a Palestinian city, as violence rages in the occupied West Bank.
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Mourners gathered in the Israeli settlement of Shilo around the shrouded body of 17-year-old Nachman Mordoff.
The teenager was one of four Israelis killed Tuesday when gunmen attacked a petrol station adjacent to nearby Eli settlement before being shot dead.
Israeli forces later arrested three “wanted people” in the West Bank village of Orif, which the military said was home to the gunmen.
In Jenin, girls in school uniform carried the body of their classmate killed in an Israeli army raid on the city on Monday.
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Sadeel Naghniyeh, 15, died from gunshot wounds she sustained during the hours-long Israeli incursion, the Palestinian health ministry announced on Wednesday.
Six other Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy and a militant, were killed in the raid.
A spokesman for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Hazem Qassem, described Tuesday’s attack against Israelis as a “response to the crimes of the (Israeli) occupation” in Jenin and elsewhere.
A statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the government will fast-track settlement expansion at Eli in response to the attack.
“Our answer to terrorism is to strike at it forcefully and build up our country,” he said in a statement.
Settler reprisals
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967. Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements considered illegal under international law.
The deadly shooting sparked reprisal attacks by Jewish settlers against residents of the nearby Palestinian town of Huwara, its mayor and a resident told AFP.
Several dozen people were wounded, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. An AFP reporter saw olive groves on fire.
Other settler attacks were reported in the evening, in Al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, near Eli, and in Beit Furik, another town in the northern West Bank.
“The destruction includes more than 10 homes, more than three commercial stores, this petrol station, the wheat field and many trees,” said Yaacoub Aweiss, head of the Al-Lubban al-Sharqiya town council.
The army said Wednesday that its forces entered Orif village to “map the homes” of the shooters, a precursor to their demolition.
Israel routinely demolishes the homes of Palestinians it blames for deadly attacks on Israelis, arguing that such measures act as a deterrent.
Human rights activists say the policy amounts to collective punishment, as it can render non-combatants, including children, homeless.
The surge in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so far this year has killed at least 170 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian.
The tally compiled from official sources includes combatants as well as civilians and, on the Israeli side, three members of the Arab minority.
(AFP)
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