Israeli troops demolish home of Palestinian assailant
ABC News
The Israeli military says troops have demolished the home of a Palestinian man who killed a Jewish seminary student in a shooting ambush in the occupied West Bank five months ago
JERUSALEM -- Israeli troops on Saturday demolished the home of a Palestinian man who killed a Jewish seminary student in a shooting ambush in the occupied West Bank five months ago, the military said.
The demolition took place around dawn in the village of Silat al-Khartiyeh, with troops swinging sledgehammers to break walls and setting off explosives. Residents threw stones and firebombs at soldiers who fired live rounds, the army said. Palestinian medics said three Palestinians were injured by live fire and others by tear gas inhalation.
Such demolitions have been denounced by rights groups as collective punishment, and the military suspended the practice for several years, starting in 2005, after concluding it did not serve as an effective deterrent. The army resumed demolitions several years ago and now carries them out routinely in response to attacks in which Palestinians kill Israelis.
In the most recent attack, two Palestinians from the West Bank killed three Israelis and wounded four in a mass stabbing in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish town of Elad in central Israel on Thursday. As of Saturday, the suspected assailants, two young men from the town of Jenin, remained at large.
