Israeli soldiers clash with Palestinians

  • 01/11/2015
(Reuters)
(Reuters)

Violence has broken out in the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron as Palestinians buried five teenagers killed in a wave of attacks and clashes with Israeli forces.

The funerals came as Israeli border guards shot dead a Palestinian at a checkpoint between the West Bank and Israel after he allegedly tried to stab one of them, police said.

The surge of unrest since early October has triggered fears of a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation by a generation gripped by despair and anger over stalled peace efforts.

Nine Israelis, 66 Palestinians and an Arab Israeli have been killed since the violence erupted in Jerusalem a month ago.

The violence has spread to the West Bank, with daily protests and attacks on Israeli soldiers, and to the Gaza Strip, where there have been clashes with Israeli forces along the borders of the coastal enclave.

Thousands of Palestinian mourners on Saturday attended the funerals of the five teenagers, two of whom were girls, in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, a powder-keg in the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

They waved Palestinian flags and chanted "we will die but Palestine will live on".

Clashes broke out between Palestinian stone throwers and Israeli soldiers as the funerals began.

Palestinian medical sources said 12 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire.

One Palestinian was buried separately in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Many attackers who have targeted Israeli forces come from Hebron, a stronghold of the Islamist movement Hamas.

Hundreds of Palestinians also attended the funeral of another victim of the West Bank violence, eight-month-old Ramadan Thawabteh. Officials said he was asphyxiated by tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers near his Bethlehem home Friday.

Simmering tensions boiled over in September regarding the status of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews, before spiralling into a series of attacks from October 1.

Palestinians accuse Israel of seeking to change the rules governing the compound, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted he will not alter a status quo that forbids Jews from praying there.

On Friday (local time), the Palestinians also urged the International Criminal Court to accelerate its probe into accusations of "Israeli war crimes", handing over a 52-page dossier alleging summary killings and collective punishment.

AFP