WEST BANK: Palestinians bury teenager killed by Israeli troops in West Bank as Olmert condemns Jewish settlers violence

Record ID: 559844

  • Title: WEST BANK: Palestinians bury teenager killed by Israeli troops in West Bank as Olmert condemns Jewish settlers violence
  • Date: 14th September 2008
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF BODY ON STRETCHER
  • Embargoed: 29th September 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA8O43TR27Z93937W1NYL9ZZDSR
  • Story Text: Palestinians buried on Sunday (September 14) an 18-year-old who was killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank on Saturday (September 13) as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert condemned Jewish settlers' attack on Palestinian villagers.
    Hundreds of men attended the funeral procession, held in the West Bank town of Bethlehem just after Muslim prayers.
    The young man was killed by Israeli troops on Saturday (Saturday 13) hours after Jewish settlers clashed with residents of a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank and the stabbing of an Israeli boy.
    Palestinian security officials said the 18-year-old was shot by troops after he and a group of Palestinian youths had hurled stones at an army patrol vehicle near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
    An Israeli army spokesman said troops arrived at an area near the village of T'koa after two American tourists were hurt by rocks thrown at their bus by Palestinians.
    The spokesman said the troops used non-lethal means to disperse the Palestinians who rioted at the scene, but said one live bullet was fired by the troops. He said the army was investigating the incident.
    Hours earlier, dozens of Israeli settlers clashed with residents of a Palestinian village near Nablus in the northern West Bank, where three Palestinians were shot and wounded by the settlers, medical officials said.
    The clashes seemed to have been triggered by the stabbing of a nine-year-old Israeli boy by a Palestinian who infiltrated a Jewish settlement outpost and set fire to an abandoned building. The spokesman said the boy was attacked after spotting the man and calling for help.
    An Israeli hospital official said the boy was lightly wounded from stabbing in his back.
    But in a cabinet meeting held in Jerusalem earlier on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert likened a rampage by armed Jewish settlers in a Palestinian village to a pogrom and said Israel would not tolerate such attacks in the occupied West Bank.

    "In the state of Israel there will not be pogroms against non-Jewish residents. We have law enforcement authorities, we have police, we have security services, we have first and foremost, an army that knows how to deal with attacks against Jews and that fights terrorists. It will not help whoever takes the law into his own hands and attacks innocent civilians as they did this weekend," Olmert told his ministers.
    Some 500,000 Jews live among 2.5 million Palestinians on West Bank land captured by Israel in a 1967 war, including Arab East Jerusalem.
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