The bodies of the three Israeli teenagers kidnapped two weeks — Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel — have been located by the IDF near Hebron. Details as to how and when they were killed have not been made public yet.
News reports and rumors circulated for hours, but we waited until official confirmation, this tweet being from the Prime Minister’s Arab Media spokesman:
[Note – the original of Ofir Gendelman’s tweet above has been deleted, not sure why]
The Times of Israel reports:
Israeli troops on Monday discovered the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, who were kidnapped on June 12, north of Hebron in the West Bank.The bodies were found in an area between Halhul and Karmei Tzur on Monday afternoon. Israeli security forces, which had been conducting extensive searches in the area, sealed off the area and declared it a closed military zone.
Buzzfeed reports that the teens likely were shot during the kidnapping:
BuzzFeed spoke to an Israeli official involved in the case, who confirmed that during the police call a gunshot can clearly be heard. The car, he added, had clear evidence of foul play. Over the last week. Israeli soldiers could be seen digging through rocks and dredging wells in Hebron in the search for the teens.“We have been operating, for some time now, with evidence that these boys were killed,” he said. “It is with a heavy heart that we realized we were looking for bodies.”An Israeli army officer, who spoke to BuzzFeed by phone from the Hebron area, said that an autopsy had not yet been conducted. He said that the bodies of three teens had been found shot, likely very close to the time of their abduction.
This post will be updated as additional details are released. There are plenty of alleged facts and photos circulating on Twitter and Facebook — we’re going to stick with official and/or confirmed news reports.
UPDATES:
Netanyahu’s official account tweeted this statement:
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