Israel arrests Palestinians after West Bank blast

OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: Israeli security forces have arrested a number of Palestinians in the West Bank as part of a manhunt after an explosion that killed an Israeli teenager, the army said on Saturday.

The homemade bomb on Friday near the settlement of Dolev, northwest of Ramallah, killed 17-year-old Rina Shnerb and wounded her father Eitan and brother Dvir.

No Palestinian group took responsibility for the blast.

“As part of the ongoing pursuit,” Israel’s army, Shin Bet security service and police “apprehended a number of suspects and transferred them to security forces for further questioning,” the military said in a statement.

An army spokesman could not provide further details or the number of arrests made after what the military has called a terror attack.

Shnerb was buried on Friday in her central Israeli hometown of Lod.

Her father and brother were in stable condition on Saturday, Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital said.

Palestinians sporadically attack Israelis in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, but bomb attacks have been rare.

Palestinian attacks have mostly involved guns, knives and car ramming.

There have been concerns about a possible increase in violence in the run-up to Israel’s September 17 general election.