Clashes spill into Israel over ‘burned alive’ Palestinian teen

[bemildred]

UMM EL FAHM, Israel: Clashes sparked by the abduction and murder of a Palestinian teenager spread from east Jerusalem to Arab towns inside Israel on Saturday, as autopsy reports showed he was burned alive.

Rocket fire targeting Israel from Gaza also increased, raising fears of an escalation with the Hamas movement which controls the Palestinian enclave.

Mohammed Abu Khder, 16, was abducted from his Shuafat neighborhood in occupied east Jerusalem early Wednesday, and his charred body found hours later in a west Jerusalem forest.

Palestinians said Jewish extremists killed him in revenge for the kidnapping and murder in the West Bank last month of three Israeli teenagers.

http://www.arabnews.com/news/597111

Reuters version:

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/05/uk-palestinians-israel-idINKBN0FA0M920140705

[bemildred]

1. LIVE UPDATES: Israel shuts down main highways as clashes erupt across country

Dramatic developments were revealed Sunday, four days after the murder of a Palestinian teenager and six days after the bodies of three kidnapped Israelis were found:

Six people have been arrested in connection to 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir's death, and police increasingly believe it to have been carried out by Jewish extremists in revenge for the abduction and murder of the three Israeli teens. Meanwhile, a Palestinian resident of Hebron has been arrested in what believes to be connection to the three teens' deaths.

Riots sparked by Abu Khdeir's spread over the weekend from Jerusalem to Arab towns in Israel's north. Dozens of protesters, many with their faces masked, set fire to tires and blocked main roads as they clashed with police. The clashes subsided Sunday morning and resumed in full force in the evening, as some 200 protesters blocked Route 70, hurling rocks.

On the Gaza front, militants in the coastal territory continued to fire barrages of rockets at Israel, to which the IDF responded with air strikes on the central and northern strip. A soldier suffered light shrapnel wounds from a mortar shell in the Eshkol area over the weekend.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.603274

[Jefferson23]

2. I see things are going swimmingly. n/t

[bemildred]

3. Yeah. Sure is. It does seem to have dawned on them that this might not be good. nt

[bemildred]

4. Hamas says air strikes kill six of its men; Israel denies

(Reuters) - Israel called up reserve troops on Monday for a possible escalation of hostilities with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip where Hamas said six of its fighters were killed by air strikes, something Israel denied.

Hamas vowed revenge for what it said were deadliest attacks in a surge of violence since the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli youths and a Palestinian teen.

Palestinian militants kept up their now-daily rocket launchings into Israel as pressure mounted from hardliners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition for tougher action against Hamas, the dominant force in the Gaza enclave.

The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted "terror sites and concealed rocket launchers" in the enclave, but had not hit the southern Gaza area of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, where the Hamas gunmen died.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/07/us-palestinians-israel-idUSKBN0FC0JP20140707