Israeli soldiers launched a massive manhunt in Palestinian areas of the southern West Bank last night after an Israeli civilian went missing after entering a Palestinian village.
The military feared the man, a 22-year-old resident of the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, may have been kidnapped or killed by Palestinian militants.
Last June three Israeli teenagers were seized while hitching a lift and killed in the same area, near the city of Hebron. The subsequent Israeli security clampdown in the West Bank prompted rocket attacks from Hamas in Gaza and eventually escalated into a 50-day war.
A friend travelling with the missing man called the police hotline yesterday afternoon to report that his colleague had entered the Palestinian village of Beit Anun to look for tools to repair a flat tyre and had not returned.
However, police realised there were no flat tyres and the friend kept changing his story raising the possibility of some kind of criminal background, possibly drug-related, to the incident. The missing man had also left his mobile phone in the car.
Israeli civilians are prohibited from entering Palestinian areas of the West Bank and it is unlikely the missing man would look for tools in a hostile village when there was an Israeli petrol station on the main road close to where the car stopped.
As night fell, it was feared the missing man was no longer in Beit Anun, and security forces widened their search, setting up roadblocks throughout the West Bank.
Israeli army intelligence were co-operating with Palestinian intelligence officers last night in an effort to glean information on the man’s fate. There were no claims by militant Palestinian groups of an abduction or killing.
