Palestinian family to bury murdered teenager Large crowds are expected to gather for the funeral of Mohammed Abu Khdair, a Palestinian teenager killed in an apparent revenge attack for the murder of three Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank last month. Abu Khdair was abducted near his family home in the Shuafat area early on Wednesday morning. Witnesses said he was forced into a car by two or three men. His body was found in a Jerusalem forest hours later, burned beyond recognition. After two days of forensic tests and an autopsy, police told his father to collect the body on Friday afternoon. The funeral follows two days of clashes in Shuafat between local youth and Israeli border police. Dozens of people were injured in the heaviest fighting, on Wednesday. Parts of the Jerusalem light rail system were damaged, and officials say it could take months to repair. Police say they still have not identified the killers, or their motive. Regardless of the motive, this murder is reprehensible, and we will bring those responsible to justice, said the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday night. Residents of Shuafat, though, say there is no reason to believe the murder was a family or criminal dispute. Circumstantial evidence also points to a revenge killing: Channel 10 reported on Thursday night that the car used to abduct Abu Khdair was the same one used in an attempted kidnapping of another Palestinian child, a day earlier. The bodies of the three Jewish settlers - Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaer and Naftali Frenkel - were found in a valley outside Hebron on Monday. Tens of thousands of people attended their funeral in Modi’in on Tuesday. Calls for revenge have circulated widely on social media, and on Thursday four soldiers were jailed for incitement over their posts. This is also the first Friday of Ramadan, when tens of thousands of Palestinians gather to pray at Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Israel has barred access to most men, allowing only those over the age of fifty to enter. A police spokesman said hundreds of extra officers have been sent to the old city and Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem in anticipation of clashes. Separately, the Israeli army sent reinforcements to the border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday, amid intensifying rocket fire on southern Israel. The deployment came after 11 Palestinians were wounded in Israeli air raids on Gaza. Netanyahu said that the reinforcements were preparing for the possibility of act forcefully. Local media reported on Friday that Israel had given Hamas a 48-hour ultimatum to stop the rocket fire. Source: aljazeera/news/middleeast/2014/07/palestinian-family-bury-murdered-teenager-20147472212829948.html
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 09:39:12 +0000