Two Palestinians found dead in suspected murder

The bodies of two Palestinian citizens of Israel were found in a burnt-out car in the city of Ramla in central Israel early Thursday in what police say may have been a murder.

"Preliminary examination of the scene has revealed that the two Arab residents of Ramla were murdered," Luba Samri, a spokesperson for the Israeli police, said.

She added that the two bodies, which were discovered in the early hours of Thursday, had been sent for autopsy in Tel Aviv.

Israeli public radio quoted one police source as describing the incident as a "double homicide."

This summer, three Jewish settlers confessed to abducting and murdering Mohamed Abu Khdeer, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

Tension has mounted in Jerusalem – and in the rest of the occupied West Bank – ever since the kidnap and murder of three Israeli settlers this summer and the subsequent abduction and murder of Abu Khdeer.

Both incidents preceded a devastating Israeli military onslaught on the Gaza Strip in July and August that left over 2,160 Palestinians dead – the vast majority of them civilians – and some 11,000 injured.

Israeli bulldozers destroy West Bank cattle barn

Meanwhile, Israeli bulldozers on Thursday demolished a Palestinian cattle barn in the West Bank city of Hebron on the pretext that it lacked a building license, eyewitnesses have said.

Three Israeli bulldozers pushed into the town of Burg on Hebron's outskirts, where they demolished the 2,000-square-meter structure, which had been owned by a Palestinian man named Mohamed Masharqa.

Israeli forces had earlier informed Masharqa and other Palestinian barn owners that the structures would be demolished, ostensibly due to the lack of construction licenses.

Israeli officials were not immediately available to comment on the demolitions.

Israel typically prevents Palestinians in the West Bank's "Area C" – established in line with the Oslo Accords – from erecting structures in the area on grounds that the land is "Israeli territory."

The US-sponsored Oslo Accords, signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1993 and 1995, divided the West Bank into areas A, B and C.

Area C, which constitutes nearly two thirds of the West Bank's total territory, remains – in line with the terms of the accords – under full Israeli security and civilian control.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the city of Jerusalem in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state in a move never recognized by the international community.