HEBRON: Violence broke out on Saturday in the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron as Palestinians buried five teenagers killed in a wave of attacks and clashes with Israeli forces.

The funerals came as Israeli border guards shot dead a Palestinian at a checkpoint between the West Bank and Israel after he allegedly tried to stab one of them, police said.

Thousands of Palestinian mourners attended the funerals of the five teenagers, two of whom were girls, in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, a powder-keg in the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

They waved Palestinian flags and chanted “we will die but Palestine will live on”.

Clashes broke out between Palestinian stone throwers and Israeli soldiers as the funerals began.

Palestinian medical sources said 12 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire.

One Palestinian was buried separately in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Israel has been withholding the bodies of suspected assailants as part of measures to dissuade attacks on Jews.

On Friday, its said it had released seven bodies, apparently to ease tensions.

Families of children killed in the violence have clamoured for their bodies to be released and accuse authorities of “collective punishment”.Many attackers who have targeted Israeli forces come from Hebron, a stronghold of the Islamist movement Hamas.

Hebron, home to a shrine known to Jews as Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque, has 200,000 Palestinian residents.

But the presence of 500 Israeli settlers near the city centre, living behind barbed wire and watchtowers, with an army-patrolled buffer zone, has kept tensions high.

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2015

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