HEBRON, WEST BANK —Israeli forces on Tuesday shot and killed two Hamas operatives suspected of kidnapping and killing three Israeli teenagers this summer.
The abduction of the three Jewish students in the West Bank, and the Israeli military’s mass arrests of Hamas members that followed, was part of a cascade of events that eventually led to the 50-day war in Gaza, one of the bloodiest in years of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said the two suspects were surrounded by Israeli forces at a carpentry workshop in Hebron, where they had been hiding for a week. He said that there was an exchange of gunfire and that Marwan Kawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Aisha, 32, were killed as they emerged from the building.
A neighboring shopkeeper said Israeli special forces units arrived about 3 a.m. and began an assault on the building, which was charred with smoke from a raging fire.
The merchant said one of the suspects was fatally shot in the street and the other found dead and burned in the basement.
Brig. Gen. Avi Yedai, head of the Israeli military in the West Bank, told Israel Radio that the kidnappers had been given a chance to surrender.
Salah Bardawil, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the group “mourns the two martyrs … who were murdered by the Zionists.”
He said the deaths of the two Palestinians would not have happened without help from Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank, which Hamas deplores as collaborating with the enemy.
Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, were abducted June 12 while hitchhiking home from their religious schools in the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with the parents of the Israeli teens and later said: “Nothing can assuage their pain, and nothing can bring back their wonderful, dear boys. But I told them that justice has been done and that we had carried out the mission that we promised to them and all of Israel.”
