Israel yesterday deployed hundreds of troops in a hunt for suspected Palestinian gunmen after an Israeli couple were killed in front of their children in the occupied West Bank.
Eitam and Naama Henkin, both in their 30s, were gunned down on Thursday night while driving between the settlements of Itamar and Elon More in the north of the Palestinian territory.
Their four children, aged between four months and nine years, were found unharmed in the back of the car.
Israeli army spokesman Arye Shalicar said security forces were conducting an “intensive search” on the ground combined with intelligence efforts.
The Henkins were residents of the central West Bank settlement Neria, northwest of Ramallah. They were to be buried in Jerusalem’s Har Hamenuhot cemetary yesterday.
In the Palestinian village of Beitillu, a short distance from Neria, assailants torched a car and spray-painted “Revenge Henkin” on a nearby wall, the army said.
Nobody was hurt in the incident, the army added.
Apprehensive of rising tensions among settlers and Palestinians, the army said it would be deploying “four battalions in order to prevent an escalation of violence in the area adjacent to the location of the attack.”
Thursday’s shooting came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly, and a day after that of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who said that Israel’s refusal to release prisoners and stop settlement activity was hampering fresh peace talks.
Netanyahu condemned the killings, which he called “the effects of Palestinian incitement,” vowing that security services would work to “capture the murderers and improve security for all Israeli citizens.”
Tensions have been running high between Israeli police and Palestinians at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.
The site of Thursday’s shooting was near the Palestinian village Beit Furik, where a Palestinian was killed by Israeli forces during clashes last month.
Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon said security forces would “spare no efforts to arrest the killers and their sponsors.”
The Palestinian militant group Hamas for its part hailed those behind Thursday’s deadly attack, while not taking responsibility for it.
“This operation was in response to the crimes of the Zionists,” Hamas said in a statement.
Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War. Jewish nationalists see the entire West Bank as part of Israel.
Israel refers to the territory as Judea and Samaria, the names for the ancient Biblical kingdoms there.
The last killing of an Israeli in the West Bank happened on June 29, when a settler died and three others in a car with him were wounded.
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