Settler murdered, his body burnt
Body of Dr. Danny Yaakovi from West Bank settlement of Yakir found Thursday in car trunk near Nablus. Police, IDF assess settler murdered for nationalistic reasons. Alert level raised on Road 443 for fear terrorist may infiltrate Israel
Terror in Samaria: 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.
Yaakovi will be laid to rest at 12:00 Friday at the Segula cemetery.
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.
Thus far, no Palestinian organizations have claimed responsibility for the murder.
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.
Meanwhile, the police raised the alert level on Road 443, between Jerusalem and Modiin, for fear a terrorist may infiltrateIsrael.
Settlers warned of kidnap attempts
Security forces' main lead is that the murder was nationalistically motivated, and are checking whether this is an additional incident of a kidnap and murder similar to that of 18-year-old Eliyahu Asheri from the settlement of Itamar.
Asheri was abducted and killed at the end of June 2006 by members of the Popular Resistance Committees. His body was found, days after his disappearance, in the Tira neighborhood in Ramallah.
Recently, security forces warned settlement residents of possible kidnap attempts by terrorists and instructed them accordingly.
In light of the large number of warnings and the war in the north, the police decided to limit the age of Muslim worshippers in the Friday prayers at the Temple Mount. Access will only be permitted to worshippers over the age of 45 carrying Israeli identity cards.
Defense establishment officials said that recently there has been a rise in the number of general warnings on plans to carry out terror attacks in general, and in Jerusalem in particular.
Two attempts to carry out terror attacks in the capital were carried out in the past two weeks: A stabbing attack in which a yeshiva student was moderately injured, and an incident in which a would-be suicide bomber was captured with a bag containing an explosive belt. The terrorist had declared that he planned to detonate himself in the city's central Jaffa Street.
Ali Waked contributed to the report
