Beit Furik (Palestine): Hundreds of Israeli occupation troops were searching the West Bank Friday for the suspected Palestinian killers of a Jewish colonist couple shot in their car, the army said.
Rabbi Eitam Henkin and his wife, Naama, both in their 30s, were shot as they were travelling in their car Thursday night between the Jews-only colonies of Itamar and Elon More, in the north of the Israeli-occupied territory.
Their four children, aged between four months and nine years, were found unharmed in the back of the vehicle.
Israeli forces were conducting an “intensive search” on the ground, said occupation spokesman Arye Shalicar.
The Henkins were residents of the Neria colony, northwest of Ramallah.
The regime’s foreign ministry said they were returning from a graduation ceremony at a Jewish school when the shooting occurred around 9pm.
The incident came hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly, and a day after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel’s refusal to release prisoners and stop colony activity was hampering fresh peace talks.
The European Union called for justice as well as restraint.
“Even in the face of such a crime, restraint and calm are needed on all sides to ensure that the violence witnessed yesterday and in recent months does not aggravate the situation further,” it said.
In the Palestinian village of Beitillu, a short distance from Neria, assailants torched a car and spray-painted “Revenge Henkin” in Hebrew on a nearby wall, the army said, adding that nobody was hurt.
The Henkins were buried Friday in occupied Jerusalem’s Har Hamenuhot cemetery at a ceremony attended by thousands of mourners, including their oldest child Matan, and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.
Tensions have been running high between occupation police and Palestinians at the Al Aqsa mosque compound in occupied Jerusalem.
The site of Thursday’s shooting was near the Palestinian village of Beit Furik, where a Palestinian was killed by Israeli forces during clashes last month.
The circumstances surrounding the killing remain unclear. A group purportedly linked to the Palestinian Fatah movement claimed responsibility, but this could not be immediately verified.
Hamas for its part hailed those behind the shooting, while not taking responsibility for it.
“This operation was in response to the crimes of the Zionists,” it said.
Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War in a move never recognised by the international community.
The last killing of an Israeli in the West Bank happened on June 29, when a colonist died and three others in a car with him were wounded.
On July 31, suspected Jewish terrorists firebombed a Palestinian home in the village of Duma that killed toddler Ali Saad Dawabsha and fatally wounded his parents.
