Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: We killed Yakir settler
Senior organization member declares Friday night that his group was behind murder of Yakir resident, whose burnt body was found Thursday in car trunk in Qalqilya area
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, said it had killed the 59-year-old Israeli settler near the West Bank city of Qalqilya.
Dr. Danny Yaakovi, a doctor from the settlement of Yakir in the West Bank, was murdered Thursday night, apparently due to nationalistic motives, and his body was found in the trunk of his car near Qalqilya.
"We claim responsibility for killing the settler near Qalqilya," said Abu al-Tayeb, a senior al-Aqsa member on Friday night.
A statement issued by the organization said that the murder was committed because "Israel and its army do not have pity on the lives of the Palestinians. This is a message of fire for the Israeli occupation."
Yaakovi was laid to rest at 12 p.m. Friday at the Segula Cemetery in Petah Tikva.
Yaakovi’s body was found Thursday night near the West Bank village of Abos, between the cities of Qalqilya and Nablus. The car was removed
from the scene and was inspected by forensic division of the police. The body was transferred to the Abu Kabir National Institute of Forensic Medicine, where it was identified.
Dr. Yaakovi, 59, lived in Yakir with his wife Hani for 21 years. Koby Butbul, a resident of the settlement, said the community was in utter shock after the murder. “We don’t know what happened. Since yesterday afternoon no one could reach Danny. I was at home in the evening and the mood was tense.”
“Danny was a god-fearing family man, very connected to the land of Israel with all his heart. He planted an orchard by his house full of fruit trees,” Butbul mourned his friend.
Dr. Yaakovi liked to travel around Israel, and often accompanied tours and youth camps as a doctor, Butbul said.
Born in Petah Tikva, Yaakovi was father of four children and grandfather of 12. He worked as a doctor in a number of hospitals.
Intelligence info leads police to body
Police investigators assessed that Yaakovi arrived in the village of Funduk, not far from Kedumim, Thursday afternoon to have his car fixed. It is suspected that he was then attacked and murdered, and his body was burned very shortly thereafter.
The body was found after the defense establishment received intelligence information on a burned car found between the villages of Haja and Abos. Reserve soldiers who searched the area found the car, bearing Israeli license plates, completely burnt with a burnt body inside its trunk.
Security forces were dispatched to the area and launched an investigation into the incident.
Ayad Akra, commander of the Preventive Security Service in the Qalqilya area, told Ynet that so far his people had no additional information and that the only detail the Palestinian security forces had was about a burnt body in a car.
"We know nothing about the man's identity and are continuing to investigate," he said.
A Palestinian security source told Ynet that the body was found in one of the fields of the Baka al-Hatab village, about 20 kilometers (12.42 miles) east of Qalqilya. The Palestinian defense establishment was also looking into the possibility that an Israeli was kidnapped and murdered for nationalistic motives.
According to the Palestinian source, Baka al-Hatab is a particularly quiet village and according to initial estimations the village residents were not the ones who committed the act.
Reuters and Efrat Weiss contributed to the report
