JERUSALEM — Israeli aircraft carried out more than 30 strikes on militant targets in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, the army said, as the government weighed a broader response to the killings of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.
JERUSALEM — Israeli aircraft carried out more than 30 strikes on militant targets in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, the army said, as the government weighed a broader response to the killings of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.
Tens of thousands attended the funeral of the three youths, which was broadcast live on national television, as troops intensified their searches in the West Bank for two Palestinians suspected in the slayings.
The Israeli security Cabinet met for a second time late Tuesday to consider further action in response to the killings.
In a statement before the meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to track down the killers and continue a crackdown in the West Bank on Hamas, the militant Islamist group he has accused of the abductions and slayings.
“Hamas is responsible and Hamas is paying, and will continue to pay,” Netanyahu said. He added that if necessary Israel was prepared to “broaden the campaign” on “Hamas targets” in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli military officials, however, called the Gaza strikes a response to rocket fire and didn’t link them to the killings of the teens, suggesting that the abductions may have been locally organized in the West Bank and not ordered by Hamas leaders in Gaza.
Authorities released a tape recording of an emergency call to police by one of the teenagers immediately after they were seized, which suggested they were slain soon after they boarded the kidnappers’ car. The audiotape, with sounds of screams and apparent gunshots, fueled a raging controversy over the police responders’ dismissal of the message as a crank call.
The teenagers’ bodies were found Monday under a pile of rocks in terraced farmland northwest of the West Bank city of Hebron after more than two weeks of intensive searches. The youths had gone missing June 12 while hitchhiking home from religious schools they attended in the West Bank.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the killings. Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency has named two suspects who are still at large, saying they are Hamas operatives from Hebron.
