Villages and settlements scoured in hunt for suspected Palestinian extremists who murdered Israelis Eitam and Naama Henkin in front of their four children
Israel has launched a huge manhunt in the West Bank for the suspected Palestinian gunmen who killed a pair of Israeli settlers in front of their children.
Eitam and Naama Henkin, both in their 30s, were driving with four of their children between the settlements of Itamar and Elon More, in the north of the occupied Palestinian territory, when they were killed in an apparent drive-by attack on Thursday night.
Their four children, aged between four months and nine years, were found unharmed in the back of the car. The attack took place shortly before 9pm.
First responder Boaz Malka said: “We saw a vehicle in the middle of the road, and a man in his 30s lying next to it with wounds in his upper torso.
“Inside the car sat a woman in her 30s, also with severe wounds to her upper torso. They were without any signs of life, and unfortunately we were forced to pronounce them dead at the scene.”
According to police, Naama Henkin died instantly while the severely wounded Eitam managed to leave the vehicle and open a door telling his children to escape, before he died.
Hundreds of Israeli soldiers ringed several Palestinian villages in their search for the killers. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, echoing remarks he made in a speech to the UN general assembly, blamed “Palestinian incitement” for the murders. Last month, an elderly Israeli man also died after crashing his car amid a stone-throwing incident in east Jerusalem.
The latest killings come at a time of mounting recent tension between Israelis and Palestinians amid a moribund peace process and growing friction once again over the flashpoint religious site in Jerusalem known as Haram al-Sharif to Muslims and the Temple Mount to Jews.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/israel-deploys-hundreds-of-troops-in-search-for-west-bank-killers
