Israeli forces are searching for three Jewish teenagers who went missing in the occupied West Bank late on Thursday, the military said on Friday, according to The Associated Press.
As media speculated that the three youths might have been abducted, large numbers of Israeli soldiers scoured the countryside around the flashpoint city of Hebron, carrying out house-to-house searches in neighboring villages and blocking roads, the AP reported.
Local media said the three youngsters had last been seen trying to hitch-hike home from a religious seminary in the Jewish settlement of Gush Etzion, to the north of Hebron, according to the AP.
"Forces are conducting a widespread operation to locate the individuals," the military said in a statement, the AP reported.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a special meeting of security ministers and said in a statement that Israel held President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed Palestinian Authority responsible for the safety of the three, but Adnan al-Dmairi, a spokesman for Palestinian security services in the West Bank, deflected Israel's criticism, according to the AP.
"Three settlers are missing - why is this the fault of the Palestinian Authority? We have nothing to do with this issue. If a natural disaster hits Israel, would we be responsible? This is mad and unacceptable. We have no knowledge about this," Netanyahu said, the AP reported.
The newspaper Haaretz said two were aged 16 and one was 19, while local media added that one of the three also held American citizenship, and that the U.S. ambassador to Israel had been briefed, according to the AP.
Secretary of State John Kerry "expressed grave concern ... and ... our commitment to working with both the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to try to ensure the situation is resolved quickly and the teenagers are returned to their families," a U.S. spokesman said, the AP reported. "Secretary Kerry has ... spoken to President Abbas to urge him to do everything possible to assist in the effort to find them. President Abbas assured him that he is doing so."
