HEBRON, West Bank, (Reuters) – A Palestinian wielding an axe and a knife killed a 13-year-old Israeli youngster and wounded a seven-year-old boy in an attack on Thursday in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, police said.
The incident took place in Bat Ayin, where some 1,000 settlers live, two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-leaning government was sworn in.
Police and the Magen David Adom ambulance service said a 13-year-old youth was killed and the wounded seven-year-old was in serious condition.
“The attacker was a Palestinian. He used an axe and a knife,” a police officer said. “We are searching for him.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Bat Ayin is near the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Hebron.
A resident of the settlement said he struggled with the attacker and disarmed him, but the man fled. “He tried to stab me. I kicked him, he kicked me,” the settler, who gave his name only as Avinoam, told Israel’s Channel 10 television.
In 2002, three residents of the settlement were sentenced by an Israeli court to prison terms ranging from 12 to 15 years for trying to set off a bomb near a Palestinian girls’ school in Arab East Jerusalem.
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