Bahadur blog

Israel arrests 40 in West Bank village hunting killers

Israeli troops on Tuesday arrested around 40 people in a village near Nablus as they continued hunting the killers of an Israeli family, Palestinian sources said.

Troops entered the village of Awarta shortly after midnight and began searching dozens of homes, seizing an unspecified number of computers, security sources and witnesses said.

The soldiers stayed in the village until dawn when they pulled out after arresting around 40 people, they said.

Since March 11, the village, which lies just south of Nablus, has been the centre of a massive manhunt in the aftermath of the grisly stabbing of a couple and their three young children, one of them a baby, as they slept in their beds in the nearby settlement of Itamar.

Following the murders, troops entered Awarta and imposed a curfew for five straight days, conducting house-to-house searches for the killers, who are believed to be Palestinian.

Last week, they entered the village again and imposed a curfew, but so far no one has been charged, with the military refusing to comment on the operation.