The abduction of three Israeli teenagers in June by Hamas militants sparked the summer onslaught on Gaza

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

An Israeli army spokesman says two Palestinians suspected in the fatal abduction of three Israeli teenagers in June have been killed in a shootout with Israeli forces.

Israel had spent months searching for Marwan Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha, militants in their 30s from the Hebron area, after naming them as the killers of the Israeli teenagers, grabbed and shot dead near a Jewish settlement on 12 June.



Hebron residents said troops had surrounded a house in the city before dawn on Tuesday and reported sounds of gunfire.

The forces were seeking to arrest Kawasme and Abu Aysha when a firefight erupted, in which the two wanted men were killed, Lt Col Peter Lerner said.

“We opened fire, they returned fire and they were killed in the exchange,” Lerner said. “We have visual confirmation for one. The second one, we have no visual confirmation, but the assumption is he was killed.”

Palestinian officials have not confirmed the men were killed, however.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Palestinians gather at the scene in Hebron where Israeli troops shot dead the two Palestinians. Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters

The two men were affiliated with the Hamas militant group which runs Gaza. A group leader praised the kidnappings in August, though other top officials denied any advance knowledge.

The teenagers’ abduction in the West Bank sparked a huge manhunt, leading to the arrest of hundreds of activists of the Islamic militant group Hamas and eventually sparking the summer war in Gaza.

The bodies of Naftali Frankel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach – who went missing in while returning from their religious schools in settlements on the West Bank – were found three weeks later and a suspected mastermind was arrested.

But the two main suspects believed to have abducted and killed the teenagers had remained fugitives.

• The subheading on this article was amended on 23 September 2014. An earlier version said Hamas militants had kidnapped the three teenagers. To clarify, Saleh al-Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, said at a conference in Turkey where he now lives that Hamas’s armed wing the Qassam Brigades had imprisoned the three teenagers. His claim was not supported by other Hamas officials. In addition, the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said last month that Hamas members may have been behind the killings, but that they were not acting on the orders of Hamas’s political leadership.