Israel vowed Monday that the “wild beasts” of Hamas will “pay” for the kidnapping and murder of three teenage boys who had been missing for nearly three weeks — and hours later, blew up the homes of two of the suspected abductors.
The search for Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, came to a grim end when Israeli searchers found their bullet-riddled bodies in an open field in the West Bank town of Halhul, authorities said.
“Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “[The teens] were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by wild beasts.”
In a final insult, Palestinians ambushed the ambulance carrying the boys’ bodies, smashing its windshield with stones and splashing it with white paint.
Early Tuesday, Israeli forces exacted a small measure of payback by demolishing the homes of two of the suspected kidnappers in the West Bank town of Hebron.
Explosives were set off at the homes of Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Eisheh, causing both structures to burn and be destroyed.
Ynetnews reported that soldiers had feared Abu Eisheh was in his house armed when they set off the explosives. No one was hurt at either house, and the whereabouts of the suspects were not clear.
Also in the predawn hours Tuesday, Israeli jets bombed 34 targets in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military called the strikes retaliation for a rocket attack from Gaza earlier in the evening.
Four were wounded and one missing in the airstrikes, and Palestinians said homes were destroyed.
The attacks came after Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri warned Israel that any offensive strikes at Gaza would set off more bloodshed.
“Netanyahu should know that threats don’t scare Hamas, and if he wages a war on Gaza, the gates of hell will open on him,” he said.
The teens disappeared on June 12 while hitchhiking home from their religious schools near Hebron, about a 15-minute drive south from where their remains were discovered.
Jerusalem blamed Hamas for the kidnapping, though the terror group has yet to claim credit.
The teen pals were picked up at around 10 p.m. on the West Bank’s Alon Shvut junction, feet from a military base, and they initially believed they were getting a ride home, an Israeli officer told BuzzFeed.
But moments later, one of the boys called the cops to report, “We’ve been kidnapped.”
They were dead within a few hours.
“We don’t know yet what led the kidnappers to shoot the teens. But we know it happened quickly, within hours, maybe within an hour, of when they were taken,” a second Israeli officer told the Web site. “They were shot. There was no chance they could survive.”
The killers moved the corpses into a second car and torched the original vehicle, the Israeli sources said.
“They buried one of the bodies further down, and the other two a bit more to the top. Maybe they were hurrying. They tried to hide the burial site with rocks,” one of the officers, named Yoav, told BuzzFeed. “They did this at night, when no one could see them.”
The massive search for the boys by civilians and the Israeli army concluded when the corpses were found “under a pile of rocks in an open field,” said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman.
Binyamin Proper, one of the civilian participants, told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that searchers saw “something suspicious on the ground, plants that looked out of place.”
“[We] moved them and moved some rocks and then found the bodies,” Proper recalled. “We realized it was them, and we called the army.”
After the grisly discovery, Israeli forces quickly blocked passage in and out of Halhul, anticipating violence.
The Israeli Cabinet met late into Monday, mapping its next move and potential strikes at Hamas in Gaza.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killings and was also expected to meet with his top aides on Tuesday.
“We want peace to be created in this part of the world so no mother or no family will be bereaved for the loss of their beloved ones, Palestinian or Israeli,” said Abdallah Abdallah, an adviser to Abbas.
In the three weeks the boys were missing, dozens of rockets were fired between Israel and Hamas fighters.
A top Palestinian Authority official said that no matter how heinous the crime, Israel should not punish large numbers of innocent Palestinians.
“Not even one Palestinian faction claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, so why do all the Palestinian people have to suffer?” Deputy Minister of Prisoner Affairs Ziad Abu Ein said.
President Obama sent his condolences to the teens’ families.
“As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing,” the president said. “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth.”
One of the boys, Fraenkel, had held dual US-Israeli citizenship.
His grandparents had moved to Israel from Flatbush, Brooklyn, in 1956, but the teen still has many relatives in Brooklyn and upstate.
“I am heartsick over the news from Israel,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn).
About 100 people converged on the Israeli Consulate on Manhattan’s East Side Monday night to pray for the boys.
“Our hearts are broken. Our hearts are shattered. Those boys are our sons. They are our brothers,” said Rabbi Avi Weiss, from the Hebrew Institute in Riverdale.
“They are the brothers and sons of every New Yorker, every American and every person with moral conscience who walks this earth.”
Additional reporting by Harrison Marderand Post Wire Services