JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s military said on Thursday it filed “severe indictments” against two soldiers who threw an improvised explosive at a Palestinian house in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for the kidnapping of the body of an Israeli teenager last month.
Palestinian gunmen had seized the body of an Israeli Druze high schooler from a hospital in the West Bank town of Jenin where he had been taken after a car accident. The body was later returned. The Druze are an Arab minority in Israel whose members serve in its armed forces.
“The defendants and an additional soldier assembled an improvised explosive and threw it into a crowded house,” the military said. “The act was committed with the intent of starting a fire in the home as a form of revenge for the kidnapping of the body of a young Israeli in Jenin.”
No one in the house was wounded, according to residents.
The third soldier will also be indicted in the coming days, the military said.
There has been an intensification of violence in the West Bank since March when Israeli forces began a crackdown in response to a series of deadly attacks by Palestinians.
(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch and Ali Sawafta; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
