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Photo: File - Radio Bethlehem 2000
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NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces held a children's school bus on on the main road leading from Nablus for two hours late on Monday claiming one of the children had thrown a stone at Jewish settlers from the bus.

A Palestinian Authority liaison official in Nablus, Usama Abu Arab, said that Israeli forces stopped the bus, carrying children between the ages of 10 and 12, along the main road between Nablus and the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar.

The bus was returning to Ramallah from a school trip. The children are students at Shuhadaa Silwad school in Ramallah.

Abu Arab said that the bus was released after two hours.

An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed that Israeli forces had stopped a bus because rocks were allegedly "hurled" by people on board, although she had "no information about (the stone throwers) being children."

She said there were no injuries or arrests.

Asked why there had been no arrests when Israeli forces claimed rocks had been hurled, she said: "Every case is dealt with differently... This case was dealt with as it was meant to be."

Israeli authorities regularly detain Palestinians for alleged stone throwing incidents.

Last March marked two years that five boys from the northern West Bank village of Hares have been held under administrative detention over such allegations.

Despite heavily contested evidence, the boys, aged 16 to 17 at the time of their arrest, each face 20 charges of attempted murder and potential life imprisonment for allegedly throwing stones.

"Hares Boys," an activist blog dedicated to raising awareness of their case, wrote: "If the boys are convicted, this case would set a legal precedent which would allow the Israeli military to convict any Palestinian child or youngster for attempted murder in cases of stone-throwing."

According to Military Court Watch, there were 182 Palestinian children in Israeli detention as of Feb. 28, 2015, including 25 children aged 15 or younger, nine more than the previous month.

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by IMEMC & Agencies

A group of extremist Israelis held, on Monday at night, a Palestinian school bus for several hours, near the Yitzhar illegal colony, built on Palestinian lands, southeast of the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Head of the Military District Coordination Office in Nablus, Osama Mansour, said the fanatics attacked the Palestinian bus, carrying children back home after a day trip in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

The children are from the Silwad Elementary School, in Silwad town, in the central West Bank district of Ramallah.

Mansour said the fanatics held the children from seven in the evening until eleven at night.

He added that the fanatics asked the soldiers to stop the bus allegedly after a child “threw trash from his window,” and that the Israelis confiscated the ID card of the bus driver, his keys, and the teachers’ ID cards.

The fanatics then forced all the children in the bus, and held them for approximately four hours, demanding the child who allegedly threw the trash “to surrender" the detained Palestinians were released at eleven before midnight.