JERUSALEM (AP) – A Palestinian assailant broke into a home in a West Bank settlement early on Thursday and stabbed a 13-year-old Jewish girl to death as she slept in bed, the latest in a nine-month wave of violence that had recently shown signs of tapering off.
The attacker, identified as a 17-year-old high school dropout, was fatally shot by security guards.
The Israeli military sealed off the entrances to a nearby village, the home of the attacker, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on both the Palestinian leadership and the international community to condemn the brutal assault.
“The horrifying murder of a young girl in her bed underscores the bloodlust and inhumanity of the incitement-driven terrorists that we are facing,” Netanyahu said after an emergency meeting with his defense minister. “The entire nation deeply identifies with the family’s pain and declares to the murderers: you will not break us.”
The hospital identified the slain girl as Hallel Yaffa Ariel. She was a cousin of Uri Ariel, a Cabinet minister from the Jewish Home, a party affiliated with the West Bank settler movement. The minister later said Israel would make “every effort” to build up settlements in the West Bank.