On Wednesday the discovery of a body in a Jerusalem forest raised suspicions that a missing Palestinian youth had been killed by Israelis avenging the deaths of three abducted Jewish teens.
Rock-throwing Palestinians come to blows with Israeli forces in Jerusalem after the news, but no serious injuries were reported.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli PM, in a statement, urged police to “to swiftly investigate who was behind the loathsome murder and its motive“. He called on all sides “not to take the law into their own hands”.
Palestinian inhabitants in Shuafat, an Arab suburb of Jerusalem, said on Tuesday night, they had seen a teenager forced into a vehicle outside a supermarket. They identified him as Mohammed Abu Khudair, 16.
According to an Israeli security source, Israel suspected the youth had been kidnapped and murdered, possibly in retribution for the killings of the Israeli teens, whose bodies were found on Monday, almost three weeks after they were kidnapped in the occupied West Bank.
Israel says Palestinian Hamas militants killed them. The Islamist group has neither denied nor confirmed the allegation.
A senior official of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement said the missing teenager’s family had identified the carcass, located in the wooded outskirts of Jerusalem.