TEL AVIV, Oct 31, 01 (FIDES/CWNews.com) - Several students from a Catholic school in the Holy Land were injured, and three hospitalized, when they were assaulted and beaten by Jewish teenagers, the Fides news service has reported. Israeli officials reportedly declined to press charges against the assailants.
Students from the Terra Santa School in the old town of Jaffa, adjacent to Tel Aviv, were on a field trip last week when their bus stopped at a McDonald's restaurant in Beersheba for a lunch break. Soon several buses of students from a Jewish school arrived, and-- upon hearing the younger Christian children speaking in Arabic-- provoked a fight that soon escalated to include the use of sticks, stones, and knives.
Father Arturo Vasaturo, OFM, the pastor of the parish where the Terra Santa School is located, protested that the adults supervising the Jewish teenagers did not intervene to stop the beating, and Israeli police who arrived to break up the melee refused to help the victims identify their attackers.
Catholic World News Service - Daily News Briefs
31. oktober 2001