Israel sends troops after couple killed

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military deployed hundreds of troops in the West Bank on Friday, a day after a driveby shooting by suspected Palestinian gunmen killed a Jewish settler couple driving home with their children.

The attack took place late Thursday when gunmen opened fire at a vehicle traveling near the Palestinian village of Beit Furik. The shots killed Eitam and Naama Henkin, residents of the Jewish West Bank settlement of Neria. Their four young children, including a 4-month-old infant, were in the back seat of the car, but unharmed.

On Friday, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon visited the site, pledging to catch the perpetrators and blaming Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for inciting violence.

Thousands attended the parents’ funeral Friday in Jerusalem, including Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.

“We cannot stand silently when the hands of murderers steal a loving mother and father away from their children,” Rivlin said in a eulogy. “We are facing a brutal terrorist onslaught.”

The attack comes on the heels of Palestinian rock and firebomb attacks that have prompted Israel to vow to quash such threats.

It also followed a hardline speech at the United Nations by Abbas, the last of several that Israeli leaders have condemned as incitement. Abbas has said that Israelis desecrate a Jerusalem holy site with their “dirty feet” and charged that Israel was committed to the “ethnic cleansing” of his people.

Abbas said Israel had repeatedly violated its commitments, by expanding settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, on lands the Palestinians seek for a future state, and accused Israel of waging “a new war of genocide … against the Palestinian people.”