Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced “a heinous crime” after the body of a 14-year-old Israeli shepherd was found in the West Bank, where the drama sparked a wave of violence against Palestinians.
Attacks on Palestinian villages north of Ramallah that took place after the youth disappeared yesterday escalated and extended to Hebron and Nablus today after his death was announced.
About ten Palestinian villages are besieged by the Israeli army and attacked by hundreds of Jewish settlers. There are many injured, according to authorities and Palestinian media.
“Dozens of settlers are attacking the village, burning everything they can get their hands on,” said Al-Mughair’s mayor. Clouds of smoke from burnt houses, fields, farms and agricultural implements rise above the hills of the area.
Appeals and warnings
In the area of Al-Muhair, Benyamin Asimeir disappeared on Friday morning while he was tending his sheep, which returned without him to the farm of Malachai HaSalom.
The army immediately launched a large operation, with the help of hundreds of citizens, among them a large number of settlers, to find the Israeli shepherd.
The lifeless body of the boy was found at noon on Friday in the same area. “Benyamin Asimeir was killed in a terrorist attack,” the Israeli army, police and Shin Bet internal security service said in a joint statement.
The Israeli prime minister said that the security forces are looking for the perpetrators and their accomplices and appealed for calm, asking “all Israeli citizens to allow the security forces to do their work unhindered.” Israel’s defense minister issued a warning against “any act of revenge”.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, for his part, denounced the “settler violence” calling it a “dangerous violation of the law”.
In Ramallah, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa issued a warning saying the attacks “will not deter our people from remaining on their land and lead to the failure of the operations to displace and expel” Palestinians from the lands Israel seized in 1967.
The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health and the Red Crescent announced that since yesterday at least one person has been killed and dozens have been injured, many of them by bullets.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, at least 462 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army or Jewish settlers in the volatile West Bank.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, yesterday called on the UN to “allow the development of a protective presence” in the Palestinian territories.
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