A Palestinian teenager shot by settlers near the southern West Bank town of Hebron died of his wounds overnight, Palestinian police said yesterday.
Yusef Ikhlil, 17, was shot in the head on Friday and taken in critical condition to Hebron’s al-Ahly hospital, where he was placed on life support. He died at around midnight, police said.
A relative, 19-year-old Murad Ikhlil, was wounded in the arm in the same confrontation with settlers who entered their village, Beit Umar, north of Hebron.
Settler sources said that Palestinians began throwing stones at the settlers and also shot at them, prompting the Israelis to return fire, wounding the two Palestinians.
Police could not confirm their account.
Friday’s violence came a day after settlers shot dead a Palestinian teenager near the northern West Bank town of Nablus.
The Israeli military on Friday condemned both events and said settler suspects had been detained for questioning.
“So far, a number of Israeli settlers were arrested in suspicion of involvement in the recent events,” it said, and warned both sides to keep the peace. “Action will be taken against all forms of violence on either side.”
On Thursday, 18-year-old Uday Maher Qadous, from the Palestinian village of Iraq Burin southwest of Nablus, was shot dead by a settler.
His cousin, who was with him at the time, said a group of four settlers on a nearby hilltop opened fire on them, hitting Qadous in the chest.
Israeli police said they were investigating the incident and that Qadous was shot after Palestinians began throwing stones at nearby settlers.
About 300,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank in heavily guarded settlements scattered among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million. The Palestinians and the international community deem the settlements to be a violation of international law.
Israeli and international human rights groups have called on the Israeli government to do more to protect Palestinian residents from harassment by settlers, many of whom carry weapons.
In other news, thousands of Hamas supporters on Friday protested in different locations across the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his government in the West Bank, the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.
The protests were sparked by documents from a decade of Middle East peace talks, leaked this week by the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera.
The station alleged the documents show that Abbas was ready to make far-reaching concessions to Israel, including on the fate of several million Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
While Palestinian negotiators told their Israeli counterparts that refugees must be able to choose if they want to return to what is now Israel, Abbas acknowledged in a meeting with Palestinian officials that it would be “illogical” to expect 5 million or even 1 million to exercise the “right of return.”
Hamas rejects compromise with Israel, and the leaks have deepened the enmity between the two rival Palestinian factions.
The Hamas protesters called Abbas a “traitor,” held posters with his face crossed out and burned him in effigy.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority, several hundred people rallied in support of Abbas.
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
DIVERSIFY: While Japan already has plentiful access to LNG, a pipeline from Alaska would help it move away from riskier sources such as Russia and the Middle East Japan is considering offering support for a US$44 billion gas pipeline in Alaska as it seeks to court US President Donald Trump and forestall potential trade friction, three officials familiar with the matter said. Officials in Tokyo said Trump might raise the project, which he has said is key for US prosperity and security, when he meets Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for the first time in Washington as soon as next week, the sources said. Japan has doubts about the viability of the proposed 1,287km pipeline — intended to link fields in Alaska’s north to a port in the south, where