Israeli soldiers killed a 13-year-old Palestinian in clashes during West Bank raids on Friday, hospital officials said, as a search for three Israeli teens feared abducted in the territory entered its second week.
Three other Palestinians were seriously wounded by army gunfire during raids in four towns and refugee camps.
Friday’s death raised to two the number of Palestinians shot dead by troops during search operations this week.
The three Jewish seminary students disappeared on June 12 while hitchhiking in the West Bank. Israel has blamed the Islamic militant Hamas group for the apparent abduction, but has offered no proof.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used the search to promote two other objectives — a new crackdown on Hamas and an attempt to discredit the Palestinian unity government formed earlier this month by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which is supported by Hamas.
Hamas has praised the abduction of the teenagers, but has not claimed responsibility for it.
The group has abducted Israelis in the past to press for the release of thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
In Hebron, families of Palestinians arrested recently in Israeli raids protested after weekly Muslim prayers. They gestured with three fingers, one for each missing teen, in a sign of their support for the abduction.
The gesture has become popular on social media among Palestinians and others who support the abduction of the teens.
Over the past week, thousands of Israeli troops have searched hundreds of locations in the West Bank and arrested more than 300 Palestinians, many from Hamas.
The Israeli military said it conducted raids in four towns and refugee camps early on Friday, detaining 25 suspects and searching about 200 locations.
The army said it searched nine institutions linked to Hamas and confiscated materials.
In one raid, in the town of Dura near Hebron, Palestinian youths threw stones at soldiers, drawing army fire.
A hospital official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media, said 13-year-old Mohammed Dodeen was killed by a bullet in the chest.
The army also opened fire during a raid in the Qalandiya refugee camp, where three Palestinians were seriously wounded, said Ahmed Bitawi, director of Ramallah’s hospital.
The army confirmed soldiers used life fire, saying they were responding to life-threatening situations, and added that the troops engaged in sporadic confrontations during Friday’s raids. Palestinians threw homemade explosives, firebombs, fireworks and stones, and in Qalandiya, a soldier was lightly wounded by a grenade thrown at troops, the military said.
A senior Israeli intelligence officer said on Friday that anyone linked to Hamas was potentially a target for arrest.
He acknowledged that despite recent government declarations of a major crackdown on Hamas, both Israel and Abbas’ Palestinian Authority have already dismantled much of the movement’s West Bank infrastructure in recent years.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not