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IDF shoots suspects wanted for murdering three teens in arrest attempt
The two main suspects in the June kidnapping and murder of three Jewish Israeli teenagers in the West Bank were shot and possibly killed resisting capture by IDF forces overnight. The abduction gripped the country, sparked a large-scale military search and contributed to the conditions leading to this summer’s Gaza conflict.
Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaer and Naftali Frenkel, both 16, were abducted while hitchhiking in the West Bank. Their bodies were eventually discovered by Israeli security forces near Hebron in early July. At the time, Israel named two Hamas members from the Hebron area as the prime suspects in connection with the abduction, Marwan Kawasme and Amer Abu Aisha.
Army Radio reported this morning that IDF soldiers surrounded a house in Hebron overnight, where Kawasme and Abu Aisha had been hiding. Some media reports said that both had been killed, others reported they had been wounded. According to Haaretz, the two suspects had hidden in an unused cesspool for several days following the murder itself and then disappeared. Last night’s attempted arrest was reportedly a joint operation of the IDF, Shin Bet intelligence agency and troops from the Yamam police anti-terror unit.
Last month, Marwan Kawasme’s uncle, Hassan Kawasme was arrested and charged with being the mastermind behind the kidnapping, organising and funding the crime. Under questioning, Hassan Kawasme apparently admitted that the cell received funding from Hamas operatives in order to carry out the operation.
Although Marwan Kawasme, his uncle and Abu Aisha are all Hamas activists, Hamas itself has insisted that it had no involvement in the kidnapping and said at the time of the abduction that it had no information on the incident. However, this has since been contradicted by senior Hamas leader and cleric Salah al-Aruri, who told a conference of Muslim scholars in Turkey in August that “the kidnapping to Hebron of the three settlers” was an “heroic action” which he said was “carried out by the al-Qassam Brigades,” the military wing of Hamas.