Israeli police have clashed with hundreds of Palestinians following reports that an Arab teenager was kidnapped and a body found in a Jerusalem forest.
Palestinians hurled stones at Israeli police who responded with tear gas during the clashes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement, urged police to “to swiftly investigate who was behind the loathsome murder and its motive”. He called on all sides “not to take the law into their own hands”.
Palestinian residents reported seeing a teenager named locally as Mohammed Abu Khdair, 17, as he was forced into a vehicle outside a supermarket in the Shuafat section of Jerusalem on Wednesday in the eastern part of the city.
A body was found later in the Jerusalem Forest, hours after the abduction. Israel’s Ynet web site said the body was that of an Arab, that it was charred and showed signs of violence.
A senior official of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement said the missing teenager’s family had identified the corpse as their son. The family was not immediately available for comment.
Agencies/Canadajournal