Three Israelis admit teen murder as Gaza toll hits 8

Yahoo – AFP, July 8, 2014

Three Israelis admit teen murder as Gaza toll hits 8 (AFP)

Jerusalem (AFP) - Three Jewish extremists arrested for the killing of a Palestinian teenager have confessed to the attack, an Israeli official said Monday, as shock waves from the brutal murder continued to spread.

As police struggled to contain five days of violent clashes in annexed east Jerusalem and in Arab towns across Israel, tensions were further raised by a series of deadly Israeli strikes on Gaza, which killed eight Palestinian militants.

It was the worst bloodshed since the start of the current round of violence in and around the Gaza, raising fears of a fresh confrontation between Israel and Palestinian militants in the coastal enclave.

The latest violence in Gaza began shortly after June 12 as Israel pressed a vast West Bank arrest campaign to find militants behind the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers, whose bodies were found on June 30.

Two days later, a 16-year-old Palestinian from east Jerusalem was kidnapped and killed in a suspected revenge attack, with police arresting six Jewish extremists, three of them minors.

During their investigation, three of the suspects admitted to the murder in which the victim was burned alive, an official close to the investigation told AFP.

'Mark of Cain'

"Three out of six suspects in custody have confessed to the murder and burning of Mohammed Abu Khder, and performed a re-enactment of the crime," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The murder has sparked shock and outrage, and no small measure of shame in Israel.

"To take a young boy, to kill him, to burn him - what for?" asked outgoing President Shimon Peres.

"The agony is ours. I can't compare with the agony of the mother and father, but it is the highest degree of regret and shame," he said, echoing words expressed by many Israeli commentators.

"For the murder of Mohammed, there is shame. Immense shame and disgrace over the fact that such a thing happened among us," wrote Sima Kadmon in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot.

"It is as if the mark of Cain has been branded on our forehead, all of us," she wrote, referring to the curse placed on the biblical character after he killed his younger brother Abel in the book of Genesis.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the teenager's father to convey condolences and express outrage over the murder.

Gaza toll hits 8

"The murder of your son is abhorrent and cannot be countenanced by any human being," he said.

Meanwhile, the death toll from overnight air strikes on the Gaza Strip rose to eight militants after medics retrieved a body from a tunnel near the southern city of Rafah.

They also managed to extract another militant from the tunnel who was in critical condition, they said.

Two of the militants were from the Popular Resistance Committees, while the other six from Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, who Israel blames for the murder of the three teenagers.

Lieberman bolts

The army confirmed hitting 14 targets overnight, and said militants had fired an anti-tank missile at an army patrol by the border fence, causing no injuries.

Warplanes carried out two more strikes on northern Gaza in the afternoon, causing no casualties.

Since midnight (2100 GMT Sunday), 28 rockets have hit Israel, one of which struck the outskirts of the southern city of Beersheva, the army said.

So far, Israel's response to the rocket fire has been relatively measured, with Netanyahu resisting calls from cabinet hardliners for a major operation in Gaza.

But on Monday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the rightwing nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, said he was ending his party's 20-month alliance with Netanyahu's Likud over its handling of the Gaza crisis.

Lieberman's faction is to remain in the governing coalition but his party's divorce from the Likud was expected to give it greater freedom of action in parliament.

Overnight, the angry protests which have gripped east Jerusalem and Arab Israeli towns continued to spread, with police arresting 110 people for throwing stones, damaging property and interfering with police work.

Much of the violence began in the Triangle, a concentration of Arab towns and villages close to the border with the northern West Bank, but has since spread to the Galilee region as well as to the southern Negev desert.

Tariq Abu Khder, a Palestinian-US teenager who was allegedly beaten

in Israeli police custody

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An Israeli woman holds a sign showing images of the Israeli teenagers
at a rally in Tel Aviv on Sunday. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters