Palestinian teen caught at checkpoint with explosives
A Palestinian teenager carrying a mortar shell and explosives was caught at an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank today, the Israeli army said.
Raed al-Nadi, 17, was apprehended during a routine search at the Hawara checkpoint south of the city of Nablus, about 17 miles from the border with Israel, carrying a mortar shell, three pipe bombs and a large quantity of metal fragments, an army statement said.
The military did not say what it believed he intended to do with the material, but metal objects are commonly packed around explosives to increase the lethal effect of bombs and the explosive belts used by suicide bombers.
The explosives were detonated by army engineers and al-Nadi was taken for interrogation, the army said.
His family said they had no idea what their son planned to do.
Israel maintains a web of fixed and mobile roadblocks around and within the West Bank, saying they are needed to prevent militant attacks against Israel.
Palestinians complain that the travel restrictions cause widespread suffering and economic damage and undermine the contiguity of a future Palestinian state.
At the family home in Nablus, the boy’s father, Nashaat al-Nadi, 44, said his son was a 10th grader, with no known political affiliation.
He and his 11 children are living in tents and one apartment after his house was demolished last year by the army, which was hunting Nashaat’s brother, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militant group that has claimed credit for numerous suicide bombings in Israel.
Nashaat said he was also at the checkpoint when Raed was arrested and called out to the boy as he sat, blindfolded and handcuffed, on the ground.
“I asked my son, ’Who sent you and what do you have on you?’ He didn’t answer,” the father said, adding that the youth was almost certain to get caught as Hawara is one of the most tightly controlled of the West Bank checkpoints.
“Whoever sent him wanted to get him arrested,” he said.
