The body of a missing Israeli teen shepherd was found in the West Bank Saturday morning, and officials are treating the killing as a terror attack.
Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was last seen leaving the settlement of Malachei Shalom early Friday, Israeli media reported. The sheep he was shepherding later returned without him.
His body was spotted by a drone on Saturday. The teen is believed to have been shot, but that report has not been confirmed.
The Israeli army has classified the killing as a “terrorist attack.”
No one group immediately claimed responsibility for the murder.
“We will get to the murderers and their helpers as we do to anyone who harms the citizens of the state of Israel,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday.
He ordered the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet and Israel Police to conduct a wide-scale intelligence and operational probe into the Palestinian villages near where the boy was found, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Achimeir’s vanishing sparked a wave of settler violence against the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir.
During Friday’s outcry, 26-year-old Jehad Abu Alia was killed and 25 others were reportedly wounded, according to Palestinian health officials.
Dozens of settlers returned to the village following the discovery of the teen’s body Saturday and burned 12 homes and several cars, according to reports.
Three more people in the village were injured, one critically, health officials said.
In the nearby village of Douma, Israeli settlers set fire to about 15 homes and 10 farms, the head of the village council, Slieman Dawabsheh, said.
The Israeli army used tear gas and rubber bullets against the villagers, he claimed.
Tensions between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank — which is claimed as Palestinian territory, though it has been occupied by Israel since 1967— have run particularly high since the Oct. 7 terror attack.
While the Hamas terror group fends off an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, its allies are also reportedly trying to ignite a second front in the West Bank.
According to the Associated Press, over 460 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli gunfire over the past six months.
The fallout from Binyamin Achimeir’s death comes as Israel braces for a seemingly imminent direct attack from Iran, which has vowed to avenge an Israeli strike earlier this month that killed a Revolutionary Guards leader.
The IRGC has already commandeered a Portuguese-flagged, Israeli-linked ship near the Strait of Hormuz.
With Post wires
