Israel troops kill 14-year-old in West Bank raid

The mother of Mohammed Dudin, a 14-year-old Palestinian shot dead by Israeli troops in overnight clashes in Dura, weeps during his funeral in the Palestinian village, south of the West Bank city of Hebron, yesterday. Photo: AFP

Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian 14-year-old in the occupied West Bank yesterday as they pressed a crackdown on the Islamist Hamas movement in their search for three missing teenagers.
Troops also wounded two Palestinians in a refugee camp just outside Jerusalem as clashes flared in the face of the massive military operation in which they have detained 330 Palestinians over the past week, medical sources said.
Israel accuses Hamas of last week's abduction of the two 16-year-olds and a 19-year-old from a hitch-hiking stop in the West Bank, an allegation the Islamist group has dismissed as "stupid".
But Israel has seized on the opportunity to drive a wedge between Hamas and the Palestinian leadership, who formed a merged administration for the West Bank and Gaza Strip just this month for the first time in seven years.
Palestinian security and medical sources said 14-year-old Mohammed Dudin was shot in the chest in a clash that erupted after Israeli soldiers arrived to conduct arrests in the village of Dura, south of the West Bank city of Hebron. The Israeli army said villagers had thrown stones and Molotov cocktails at troops on an arrest mission in Dura, who had responded with live fire.
 

Doctors treat a baby at a hospital following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City yesterday. Photo: AFP

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki yesterday accused Israel of overreacting in its response to three missing teenagers and said it had yet to prove Hamas was behind their disappearance.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses Hamas of last week's abduction of the two 16-year-olds and a 19-year-old from a hitch-hiking stop in the West Bank.
Hamas has lashed out at the Palestinian leadership for its decision to maintain security coordination with Israel despite the massive wave of searches and arrests.
Since the start of the operation last week, troops have "scanned about 1150 locations in search for the abducted boys and for terror elements."
"Approximately 330 suspects were detained, out of which 240 terrorists associated with Hamas," the army said.
Overnight, the Israeli military also carried out a series of air strikes in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for rocket fire against southern Israel late Thursday.