A PALESTINIAN man wielding an axe and a knife killed an Israeli teenager and wounded a seven-year-old boy yesterday during an attack in the Jewish settlement of Bat Ayin in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, tensions mounted further between Israel and neighbouring countries over the hard-line posture being adopted by the new government of prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, vowing to liberate the occu
pied Golan Heights "through peace or through war".
The remark, made to a newspaper, came a day after the far-right Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, reversed the policy of the previous Israeli government by declaring Israel would make no territorial concessions to Syria and also renounced Israel's commitment to US-backed negotiations towards a Palestinian state.
The assailant in the Bat Ayin attack escaped after killing Shlomo Nativ, 13, and wounding Yair Gamliel, seven. The Israeli army closed off the area and placed the nearby Arab village of Safa under curfew as it mounted a manhunt.
Ronen Bashari, the district director for emergency services who was among the first on the scene, said the 13-year-old was found unconscious with stab wounds in his upper back.
One resident told Israel's Channel Ten TV station: "I grabbed his hand with the axe so he wouldn't kill me. I fell down and then I managed to get up. At some stage I managed to grab the axe from his hand." The attacker then escaped.
Israeli TV reported that the attacker was a local Palestinian.
Bat Ayin is unique among the Jewish settlements of the West Bank in that its residents refuse to install a security fence.
Mr Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev, termed the attack a "senseless act of brutality against innocents".
