JERUSALEM: Israeli forces demolished the home on Wednesday of a Palestinian who fatally stabbed three Jewish residents of a nearby settlement as tensions soared last month over Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
The military confirmed the demolition in the village of Kobar in the occupied West Bank.
Residents said that army vehicles and bulldozers entered the area north of Ramallah around 3:00 am (0000 GMT) and surrounded the two-story house, one floor of which was still under construction.
In recent weeks, Israeli authorities also arrested the father, mother and three brothers of the 19-year-old attacker, Omar Al-Abed, according to villagers.
The family members are suspected of having known of Abed’s plans to carry out the attack in the nearby Israeli settlement of Neve Tsuf, also known as Halamish, and of failing to prevent it, Israeli media reported.
The Israeli army said the assailant had spoken of Al-Aqsa and of dying as a martyr in a Facebook post.
He was shot while carrying out the attack and later arrested.
The July 21 attack came with tensions high over the highly sensitive mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Violence erupted in and around the compound last month after three Arab Israelis shot dead two policemen on July 14 before being killed by security forces.
Israel responded to the July 14 deadly shootings by installing metal detectors at the entrance to the holy site, used as a staging point for the attack.
For nearly two weeks, worshippers refused to submit to the checks and held mass prayers in surrounding streets.
Ensuing protests and clashes left seven Palestinians dead and the stabbings of the Israelis at the settlement was carried out at the height of the tensions.
The crisis abated when Israel removed the detectors.
The Jerusalem holy site, which includes the revered Al-Aqsa mosque and the golden-topped Dome of the Rock, is the third-holiest in Islam and the most sacred for Jews.
Central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the compound is located in east Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move never recognized by the international community.
Palestinians fear Israel will gradually seek to assert further control over it, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said repeatedly he is committed to the status quo.
Israel regularly demolishes the homes of Palestinian attackers, calling it a deterrent against future violence.
However, human rights groups say it amounts to collective punishment, with family members forced to suffer for the acts of relatives.
Israel demolishes home of Palestinian who killed 3 Israelis
Israel demolishes home of Palestinian who killed 3 Israelis
Syria gunman who killed Americans was to be fired from security forces for ‘extremism’: ministry
DAMASCUS: Syria’s interior ministry said on Sunday that the gunman who killed three Americans in the central Palmyra region the previous day was a member of the security forces who was to have been fired for extremism.
Two US troops and a civilian interpreter died in the attack on Saturday, which the US Central Command said had been carried out by an alleged Daesh group (IS) militant who was then killed.
The Syrian authorities “had decided to fire him” from the security forces before the attack for holding “extremist Islamist ideas” and had planned to do so on Sunday, interior ministry spokesman Noureddine Al-Baba told state television.
A Syrian security official told AFP on Sunday that “11 members of the general security forces were arrested and brought in for questioning after the attack.”
The official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the gunman had belonged to the security forces “for more than 10 months and was posted to several cities before being transferred to Palmyra.”
Palmyra, home to UNESCO-listed ancient ruins, was once controlled by IS during the height of its territorial expansion in Syria.
The incident is the first of its kind reported since Islamist-led forces overthrew longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and rekindled the country’s ties with the United States.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” in support of counter-terrorism operations when the attack occurred, while US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said the ambush targeted “a joint US-Syrian government patrol.”
US President Donald Trump called the incident “an Daesh attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” using another term for the group.
He said the three other US troops injured in the attack were “doing well.”
