According to a report by the Washington Post, on Thursday night in the West Bank, three Israeli teenage students went missing. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement on Saturday attributing the kidnappings to “a terrorist organization,” and said that Israel would be holding the Palestinian government responsible for the kidnappings and “responsible for any attack coming from its territory.”
Teams have been sent to the West Bank to search for the missing teens, two aged 16 and one 19, all students at yeshiva, a religious school. It is believed that the three students were hitchhiking in a part of the West Bank called Area C, controlled by Israel. They were thought to have been outside the city of Hebron near Gush Etzion, a Jewish settlement on Thursday night.
An Israeli official told Washington Post that in the past couple years, there have been dozens of attempts to kidnap Israelis in order to trade the hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
To solve this mysterious kidnapping case, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in order “to urge him to do everything possible to assist in the effort to find them. President Abbas assured him that he is doing so,” a U.S. official told the Washington Post
So far, various groups have attempted to take responsibility for capturing the teens. SITE Intelligence Group, which scours the Web for militant sites and forums, reported that two jihadist groups claimed to be responsible for the kidnappings. The West Bank branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria claimed they had abducted the students, as well as the Liberators Battalion of Hebron.
Defense Minister Moshe Yaaloon released a statement to the Washington Post declaring dedication to getting to the bottom of the tragedy: “As long as we don’t know otherwise, our working assumption is that they are alive. We will not rest until we free the youths and put our hands on the terrorists who are responsible for this operation.”
So far, according to CNN, the Israeli government has taken 150 suspects into custody in the search to free the boys.
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