Israeli soldier, 18, found fatally stabbed
JERUSALEM -- Hundreds of people attended Thursday's funeral of an 18-year-old Israeli soldier who was found dead hours earlier with stab wounds near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the killing as a terror attack and vowed the killers would be brought to justice. Israeli troops raided a nearby Palestinian village, and the military said it was sending reinforcements to the West Bank.
The killing threatened to inflame tensions between Israelis and Palestinians just over a month before Israel's parliament elections. In response to the slaying, Netanyahu's nationalist allies called for further West Bank settlement construction and a heavy-handed response.
The soldier was identified as Dvir Sorek, from the West Bank settlement of Ofra, north of Jerusalem. He was a student at a pre-military Jewish seminary in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, south of Jerusalem. His body was found on the side of a road near the seminary.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the soldier was neither armed nor in uniform when his body was found. He said the military was investigating the circumstances of his death and searching for suspects.
Guard at Nazi camp, 92, to go on trial
BERLIN -- A 92-year-old former SS private will go on trial this fall in Germany on 5,230 counts of accessory to murder, accused of helping the Nazis' Stutthof concentration camp function, a Hamburg court said Thursday.
Though he is not accused of any specific killing, Bruno Dey is charged as an accessory to those committed at Stutthof from August 1944 to April 1945 when he served as a guard there, because he helped prevent prisoners from escaping, according to the charges filed by Hamburg prosecutors.
When he was charged in April, prosecutors called him "a small wheel in the machinery of murder."
Hamburg state court spokesman Kai Wantzen said the suspect did not deny to authorities that he had served in Stutthof and said he was aware people were being killed.
More than 60,000 people were killed at the Nazi German camp built east of Danzig, which today is the Polish city of Gdansk, including Jews, political prisoners, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and Polish civilians and resistance fighters after the brutal suppression of the 1944 Warsaw uprising.
Dey is accused of serving as a guard from August 1944 to April 1945, when he was 17 and 18. Because of his age at the time of the alleged crimes, he will be tried in juvenile court and faces a possible six months to 10 years in prison if convicted. In Germany there are no consecutive sentences.
Russian weapons-site fire kills 2 people
MOSCOW -- A fire that broke out Thursday at a weapons testing range in northern Russia killed two people, briefly raised radiation levels and prompted authorities to prohibit shipping and sailing in parts of the White Sea for a month, according to officials and news media reports.
Russia's military said the fire occurred when a liquid-fueled rocket engine exploded at the testing site, but it said that radiation levels remained at normal background levels, contradicting reports from municipal authorities in nearby Severodvinsk.
There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy in the statements from the military and authorities in Severodvinsk -- a major manufacturing and testing center for Russia's nuclear submarine fleet, and the closest major population center to the reported accident site.
The Interfax news agency reported that the fire had broken out near the town of Nenoksa, about 15 miles west of Severodvinsk. Russian news outlets have reported that a naval weapons test range is nearby.
Interfax later reported that shipping and sailing would be prohibited for a month in Dvina Bay, which is in an area of the White Sea close to the military range where the fire took place.
There were discrepancies over details of the accident.
State-run Tass news agency, citing an unidentified emergency services official, reported that a fire had broken out onboard a vessel of Russia's northern fleet northwest of Severodvinsk. An earlier report by Interfax had said the episode occurred at a weapons testing range.
London officer attacked with machete
LONDON -- A London police officer was seriously injured in a machete attack during a vehicle stop.
The Metropolitan Police force said that two officers were trying to pull over a van in east London when a man leapt out and stabbed one police officer several times. Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Tucker said it was a "frenzied and unprovoked" attack.
The officer, who is in his 30s, suffered head and hand wounds but managed to use a Taser to subdue the attacker. A man in his 50s is in custody.
Tucker said the police officer is "seriously injured, but he will make a recovery."
Police say they don't think the attack early Thursday is related to terrorism.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 08/09/2019