JERUSALEM: A rare homemade bomb attack in the occupied West Bank killed an Israeli teen and seriously wounded her father and brother on Friday as they visited a spring near a Jewish settlement, officials said.

Israeli security forces deployed throughout the area where the attack took place near the settlement of Dolev, northwest of Ramallah, to search for suspects.

Israeli medics had earlier reported that a 17-year-old had been critically wounded in the attack and officials later announced her death, naming her as Rina Shnerb from the central Israeli city of Lod.

Medics from the Magen David Adom rescue service initially gave the ages of the two wounded as 46 and 20, before amending to 21 in the latter case. The army said the three victims were a father and his two children.

The two wounded were taken by helicopter to hospital, the army said.

“Three civilians who were in a nearby spring were injured in an IED (improvised explosive device) blast,” it said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a “harsh terrorist attack” and sent condolences to the family, while pledging to continue building settlements.

“The security arms are in pursuit after the abhorrent terrorists,” he said in a statement.

“We will apprehend them. The long arm of Israel reaches all those who seek our lives and will settle accounts with them.” United Nations envoy Nickolay Mladenov condemned the “shocking, heinous” attack, saying there was nothing heroic in Shnerb’s “murder”, calling it a “despicable, cowardly act”.

“Terror must be unequivocally condemned by ALL,” Mladenov wrote on Twitter.

Israeli forces meanwhile entered the Palestinian village of Beitunia, south of the spring, to take footage from surveillance cameras.

A reporter said Palestinians clashed there with Israeli soldiers, but no casualties were reported.

Chief of the army, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi visited the site of the attack to understand the incident and oversee the efforts to locate the perpetrators, which he was “confident” would happen quickly, the military said.

Later in the day, Shnerb was buried in her hometown Lod, with thousands participating in the funeral.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2019