Israeli boys stoned to death

The bodies of two 14-year-old Israeli boys believed to have been stoned to death by Palestinians were found today in a cave near Bethlehem.

The two boys were from the West Bank Jewish settlement of Tekoah, south east of Bethlehem, police spokesman Rafi Yaffe said. Police believe they were stoned to death.

The boys left their homes on Tuesday for a walk in the desert and had not been seen since.

The boys’ bodies were found in a cave in Wadi Hariton, a dried riverbed about half a mile from Tekoa, on the edge of the Judean Desert.

The boys had skipped school yesterday and gone hiking instead, without informing their parents of the trip. When they did not return home, the parents notified security forces who began searching at daylight.

Police spokesman Rafi Yaffe said investigators believed the boys were killed by Palestinian militants.

Froman said the boys’ families had only recently settled in Tekoa. About a dozen neighbours stood outside the mobile home of the family of one of the victims to show their support. Some wept, others waited quietly.

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, Palestinians fired two mortar rounds at the Jewish settlement of Nissanit and a roadside bomb exploded as an Israeli army patrol was passing on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Nobody was hurt in either incident.

Yesterday, the body of a Jewish settler was found in the northern West Bank and a Palestinian teenager died of injuries sustained earlier in a clash with Israeli soldiers. The settler had been guarding a hilltop outpost near the settlement of Itamar.

In the past seven months of violence between Israel and the Palestinians there have been 437 deaths on the Palestinian side and 75 on the Israeli side, including the two youths.

At least six of the Israelis have been under 18.