JERUSALEM: Israeli soldiers carried out a manhunt Friday in the occupied West Bank, a day after the army blamed Palestinians for shooting dead an Israeli settler and wounding two others.
The army, which said Palestinian “terrorists” carried out the attack, has deployed three extra battalions as well as special forces.
“We are in a physical, technological, intelligence hunt,” Israeli army spokesman Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav told 103FM radio.
“We arrested last night a number of suspects... sooner or later we will find the perpetrators.”
Thursday’s shooting followed high tensions after Palestinian attacks on Israelis, and the killing of Palestinians by Israeli troops during clashes.
Army radio identified the victim as religious student Yehuda Dimentman, 25, a married father.
He studied at Homesh, an outpost that is illegal under Israeli law.
Israel seized the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War. Since then nearly 700,000 Jewish Israelis have moved into West Bank and east Jerusalem settlements that much of the international community regards as illegal.
Dimentman was shot while in the back seat of a car leaving Homesh on Thursday evening, and died en route to hospital, the Israeli army and medics said.
The car’s driver and another passenger were injured by shattered glass and taken to hospital, but their wounds were not reported to be serious.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
However, multiple Palestinian organizations — including Hamas, the militant Islamist group which controls the Gaza Strip — praised the shooting.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington condemned the attack on Thursday as a “terrorist attack... that killed an Israeli citizen and wounded two others.”
On Friday, mourners gathered at the site of the attack, army radio reported.
Dimentman’s brother Shlomi described him as “a beloved uncle.” Speaking on Israeli public radio, he said Dimentman was devoted to “strengthening the hold on the community of Homesh.”
Last week Israeli police arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian girl suspected of stabbing her Israeli neighbor — a 26-year-old mother walking with her children — in annexed east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
Tensions have also been rising within Israel’s ideologically divided coalition government over reports of violence inflicted by settlers on Palestinians.
Israel hunts Palestinians for West Bank settler killing
https://arab.news/vytng
Israel hunts Palestinians for West Bank settler killing
- Israeli army has deployed three extra battalions as well as special forces
In major policy shift on Syria, UN Security Council lifts sanctions on Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham
- Move reflects evolving Syrian political landscape in the post-Assad era, ending a global freeze on assets, travel ban and arms embargo
NEW YORK CITY: The UN Security Council on Friday removed Al-Nusra Front, the militant group that evolved into Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, from its so-called Daesh and Al-Qaeda Sanctions List.
The move signals a major shift in international policy toward Syria’s evolving political landscape in the post-Assad era, and ends a global freeze on assets, travel ban and arms embargo that have been imposed on the group since 2014.
Al-Nusra Front and Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham were led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa, formerly Abu Mohammed Al-Julani, who is now Syria’s president and was a leading figure in the offensive that toppled the Assad regime.
The consensus decision by the Security Council’s sanctions committee was announced by the UK, which holds the presidency of the Security Council this month and was acting in the absence of the chair of the committee. It followed a request by the new Syrian authorities to delist “Al-Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant.”
The decision means measures that were applied to Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham under Security Council Resolution 2734, adopted in 2024, no longer apply. As a result, UN member states are notrequired to freeze the group’s funds, restrict the movement of its representatives, or block the supply or transfer of arms and related materiel.
Al-Nusra Front was added to the sanctions list for its ties to Al-Qaeda and involvement in the financing and execution of militant activities during the war in Syria. The UN initially continued to treat the group’s successor organization, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, as a listed alias.
Al-Sharaa has said the group severed all prior transnational jihadist links and is now solely focused on local Syrian matters.
