A grisly trail of toys and blood led paramedics to the first three bodies: a mother, father and their 4-month-old infant, stabbed to death in their bed. In the next room, medics say they found the body of an 11-year-old sibling.
Finally, with growing dread, they reached the last bedroom, where a 4-year-old boy with knife wounds and a faint pulse was fighting for his life, ambulance workers said Saturday on Israel Radio. The medics worked frantically, but unsuccessfully, to resuscitate the toddler. One called it a scene of "incomprehensible horror."
...Israeli leaders condemned the attack on Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their children and launched a massive manhunt throughout the region, setting up checkpoints, sealing off Palestinian villages, imposing curfews and conducting house-to-house searches, Palestinians said.
"Israel will not stand by idly after such a despicable murder and will act vigorously to safeguard the lives of the citizens of Israel and punish the murderers," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday.
The White House offered its condolences to the victims' family, saying in a statement, "There is no possible justification for the killing of parents and children in their home."
....In the past, Palestinian militants have defended such attacks against Jewish settlers in the West Bank, describing the settlers as combatants in the conflict rather than civilians.
..."We will not rest until we capture the murderers," Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel's new army chief of staff, said after visiting the family's home in Itamar.
The hilltop settlement, home to 1,000 ideological and religious families, remained closed by the military Saturday as investigators worked to understand how infiltrators managed to evade its electric fence and intruder-detection devices.
The attacker, or attackers, appears to have climbed over or cut through the fence Friday night and crawled through a window of the family's home, according to Israeli media reports.
Two other children were also in the home, but escaped harm by hiding. Around midnight, another daughter arrived home after a youth outing and discovered the scene with a neighbor.
...Over the last two years, Israel has lifted many roadblocks and checkpoints in the area surrounding Nablus, including one at Hawara, near the highway turnoff to Itamar and Awarta. Now settlers are demanding the military checkpoints be reinstalled.
"This was a barbaric act that shows the true face of the so-called Palestinian struggle for liberation," said Danny Dayan, head of the Yesha Council, a settler group.
He said Israel should suspend its cooperation with Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and do more to protect settlers living here.
The last deadly attack on a West Bank settlement was in August, when four ...were killed near Hebron. A group affiliated with Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, claimed responsibility for that attack.
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