HELENA, Mont. (AP) — An 18-year-old Wyoming man accused of robbing and shooting three members of a family after asking for roadside help told investigators he opened fire after one of the victims laughed at him, an FBI agent said in a court filing Thursday.

Jason Shane, 51, and Tana Shane, 47, died in the Wednesday shooting in the small town of Pryor, FBI spokesman Todd Palmer told The Associated Press. Their daughter, 26-year-old Jorah Shane, was shot in the back when she tried to run away, and she is recovering in a Billings hospital, the woman's aunt, Ada Shane, said.

The statement by Special Agent Larry McGrail II was filed in U.S. District Court seeking a murder warrant for Jesus Deniz, also known as Jesus Deniz Mendoza, of Worland, Wyoming.

Two FBI agents interviewed Deniz on Wednesday, and Deniz acknowledged shooting three people with a .22 caliber rifle and then driving away in their car, McGrail's statement said.

"Deniz told the interviewing agents that he shot the victims because he was getting tired of waiting around, and because the daughter had laughed at him," the statement said.

Deniz is being held in Park County, Wyoming, after police arrested him near Meeteetse, about 120 miles away from Pryor. A judge's signed warrant would begin the process of returning Deniz to Montana to face charges in the killing.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Carolyn Ostby scheduled an initial court appearance for Deniz on Friday.

Jorah Shane recounted to her relatives the events leading to the shooting. Her mother, Tana Shane, drove by a young man parked on the side of the road who told her he had run out of fuel, Ada Shane said.

"He's only 18, and he looked like an innocent boy," Ada Shane said. "Both my brother and sister-in-law have big hearts."

Tana Shane went by her house, picked up her husband and daughter, and they drove back to the stranded car, Ada Shane said. The man pulled a gun and held it to the temple of 51-year-old Jason Shane.

He ordered the father to stop the car and told everybody to get out, Ada Shane said. He told the family to give him their money, but the family said they had only change because they recently returned from a religious revival in Window Rock, Arizona.

The man told the family to start walking. Tana Shane told her daughter in their Native American language to run. Jorah Shane told her aunt that she heard a shot, started running then heard bullets whizzing by her head. She fell, heard another shot, and started running again toward a church just as a car was pulling out.

She ran to the car, and the frightened driver leaped out, Ada Shane said. Jorah Shane jumped in the driver's seat and drove to her house with the shooter still firing at her, the aunt said.

McGrail's statement largely confirmed the account by Ada Shane, though it did not name the victims and it said the driver who stopped near the church got out of the car to check on the woman's parents.

Jorah Shane was later hospitalized. A bullet had grazed her head and she had a gunshot wound to the back. She didn't know as of Thursday that her parents had been killed in the shooting, Ada Shane said.

"Last night before she went in, she told everyone to go look for her mom, she's hiding in the field," Ada Shane said.

The aunt said relatives have kept the hospital room's television off and she doesn't know how they will break the news to her.

Palmer, the FBI spokesman, declined to identify Jorah Shane as the wounded person, saying the FBI does not provide information about potential witnesses.

It is not clear whether Deniz has an attorney. Park County court officials said a hearing had not been set for Deniz.

Messages left on two phone numbers listed under Deniz's name were not returned.

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Associated Press researchers Rhonda Shafner and Adriana Mark contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — After billions of dollars spent and more than 10,000 extremist fighters killed, the Islamic State group is fundamentally no weaker than it was when the U.S.-led bombing campaign began a year ago, American intelligence agencies have concluded.

The military campaign has prevented Iraq's collapse and put the Islamic State under increasing pressure in northern Syria, particularly squeezing its self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa. But intelligence analysts see the overall situation as a strategic stalemate: The Islamic State remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the U.S. can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan.

The assessments by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others appear to contradict the optimistic line taken by the Obama administration's special envoy, retired Gen. John Allen, who told a forum in Aspen, Colorado, last week that "ISIS is losing" in Iraq and Syria. The intelligence was described by officials who would not be named because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

"We've seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers," a defense official said, citing intelligence estimates that put the group's total strength at between 20,000 and 30,000, the same estimate as last August when the airstrikes began.

The Islamic State's staying power also raises questions about the administration's approach to the threat that the group poses to the U.S. and its allies. Although officials do not believe it is planning complex attacks on the West from its territory, the group's call to Western Muslims to kill at home has become a serious problem, FBI Director James Comey and other officials say.

Yet under the Obama administration's campaign of bombing and training, which prohibits American troops from accompanying fighters into combat or directing air strikes from the ground, it could take a decade to drive the Islamic State from its safe havens, analysts say. The administration is adamant that it will commit no U.S. ground troops to the fight despite calls from some in Congress to do so.

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This picture released on July 12, 2015 by the Rased News Network, a Facebook page affiliated with Is …

The U.S.-led coalition and its Syrian and Kurdish allies on the ground have made some inroads. The Islamic State has lost 9.4 percent of its territory in the first six months of 2015, according to an analysis by the conflict monitoring group IHS. And the military campaign has arrested the sense of momentum and inevitability created by the group's stunning advances last year, leaving the combination of Sunni religious extremists and former Saddam Hussein loyalists unable to grow its forces or continue its surge.

"In Raqqa, they are being slowly strangled," said an activist who fled Raqqa earlier this year and spoke on condition of anonymity to protect relatives and friends who remain there. "There is no longer a feeling that Raqqa is a safe haven for the group."

A Delta Force raid in Syria that killed Islamic State financier Abu Sayyaf in May also has resulted in a well of intelligence about the group's structure and finances, U.S. officials say. His wife, held in Iraq, has been cooperating with interrogators.

Syrian Kurdish fighters and their allies have wrested most of the northern Syria border from the Islamic State group. In June, the U.S.-backed alliance captured the border town of Tal Abyad, which for more than a year had been the militants' most vital direct supply route from Turkey. The Kurds also took the town of Ein Issa, a hub for IS movements and supply lines only 35 miles north of Raqqa.

As a result, the militants have had to take a more circuitous smuggling path through a stretch of about 60 miles they still control along the Turkish border. A plan announced this week for a U.S.-Turkish "safe zone" envisages driving the Islamic State group out of those areas as well, using Syrian rebels backed by airstrikes.

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Map shows the spread of the Islamic State; 2c x 3 inches; 96.3 mm x 76 mm;

In Raqqa, U.S. coalition bombs pound the group's positions and target its leaders with increasing regularity. The militants' movements have been hampered by strikes against bridges, and some fighters are sending their families away to safer ground.

In early July, a wave of strikes in 24 hours destroyed 18 overpasses and a number of roads used by the group in and around Raqqa.

Reflecting IS unease, the group has taken exceptional measures against residents of Raqqa the past two weeks, activists say. It has moved to shut down private Internet access for residents, arrested suspected spies and set up security cameras in the streets. Patrols by its "morals police" have decreased because fighters are needed on the front lines, the activists say.

But American intelligence officials and other experts say that in the big picture, the Islamic State is hanging tough.

"The pressure on Raqqa is significant, and it's an important thing to watch, but looking at the overall picture, ISIS is mostly in the same place," said Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank. "Overall ISIS still retains the ability to plan and execute phased conventional military campaigns and terrorist attacks."

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This image made from gun-camera video taken on July 4, 2015 and released by United States Central Co …

In Iraq, the Islamic State's seizure of the strategically important provincial capital of Ramadi has so far stood. Although U.S. officials have said it is crucial that the government in Baghdad win back disaffected Sunnis, there is little sign of that happening. American-led efforts to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State have produced a grand total of 60 vetted fighters.

The group has adjusted its tactics to thwart a U.S. bombing campaign that tries to avoid civilian casualties, officials say. Fighters no longer move around in easily targeted armored columns; they embed themselves among women and children, and they communicate through couriers to thwart eavesdropping and geolocation, the defense official said.

Oil continues to be a major revenue source. By one estimate, the Islamic State is clearing $500 million per year from oil sales, said Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the Treasury Department. That's on top of as much as $1 billion in cash the group seized from banks in its territory.

Although the U.S. has been bombing oil infrastructure, the militants have been adept at rebuilding oil refining, drilling and trading capacity, the defense official said.

"ISIL has plenty of money," Glaser said last week, more than enough to meet a payroll he estimated at a high of $360 million a year.

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This picture released on July 13, 2015 by the Rased News Network, a Facebook page affiliated with Is …

Glaser said the U.S. was gradually squeezing the group's finances through sanctions, military strikes and other means, but he acknowledged it would take time.

Ahmad al-Ahmad, a Syrian journalist in Hama province who heads an opposition media outfit called Syrian Press Center, said he did not expect recent setbacks to seriously alter the group's fortunes.

"IS moves with a very intelligent strategy which its fighters call the lizard strategy," he said. "They emerge in one place, then they disappear and pop up in another place."

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Karam and Mroue reported from Beirut.

Follow Ken Dilanian on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kendilanianap .

Follow Zeina Karam at https://twitter.com/zkaram?lang=en. Follow Bassem Mroue at https://twitter.com/bmroue

Wochit
Exclusive: Walkout at Taliban Leadership Meeting Raises Specter of Split

By Jibran Ahmad

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - At the Taliban meeting this week where Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was named as the Islamist militant group's new head, several senior figures in the movement, including the son and brother of late leader Mullah Omar, walked out in protest.

The display of dissent within the group's secretive core is the clearest sign yet of the challenge Mansour faces in uniting a group already split over whether to pursue peace talks with the Afghan government and facing a new, external threat, Islamic State.

Rifts in the Taliban leadership could widen after confirmation this week of the death of elusive founder Omar.

Mansour, Omar's longtime deputy who has been effectively in charge for years, favors talks to bring an end to more than 13 years of war. He recently sent a delegation to inaugural meetings with Afghan officials hosted by Pakistan, hailed as a breakthrough.

But Mansour, 50, has powerful rivals within the Taliban who oppose negotiations and have been pushing for Mullah Omar's son Yaqoob to take over the movement.

Yaqoob and his uncle Abdul Manan, Omar's younger brother, were among more than a dozen Taliban figures who walked out of Wednesday's leadership meeting held in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, according to three people who were at the shura, or gathering.

"Actually, it wasn't a Taliban Leadership Council meeting. Mansoor had invited only members of his group to pave the way for his election," said one of the sources, a senior member of Taliban in Quetta. "And when Yaqoob and Manan noticed this, they left the meeting."

Among those opposing Mansour's leadership are Mullah Mohammad Rasool and Mullah Hasan Rahmani, two influential Taliban figures with their own power bases who back Yaqoob.

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Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, Taliban militants' new leader, is seen in this undated handout p …

But Mansour got a boost late on Friday with the surprise backing of his longtime rival, battlefield commander Abdul Qayum Zakir, a former inmate of the U.S. prison in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay.

In a letter published on the Taliban website, Zakir wrote that he had read reports "that I had differences with Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour. Let me assure that this isn't true".

A Taliban commander close to Zakir, Nasrallah Akhund, confirmed by telephone that Zakir wrote the letter.

PEACE TALKS IN JEOPARDY

The leadership gathering was held outside Quetta, where many Taliban leaders have been based since their hardline regime in Afghanistan was toppled in a 2001 U.S.-led military intervention.

Afghan Taliban leaders have long had sanctuaries in Pakistan, even as Pakistani government officials have denied offering support in recent years.

Mansour leads the Taliban's strongest faction and appears to control most of its spokesmen, websites and statements, said Graeme Smith, senior Afghanistan analyst for the think-tank International Crisis Group. But some intelligence officials estimate Mansour only directly controls about 40 percent of fighters in the field, he said.

That could make it difficult for him to deliver on any ceasefire that could emerge from future negotiations.

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The Tolonews website runs a story on its front page reporting about news of the death of Taliban lea …

And Taliban insiders say that by sending a three-member delegation to meet Afghan officials in the Pakistani resort of Murree earlier in July, Mansour sparked new criticism.

Especially riled were members of the Taliban's political office in Qatar, who insisted only they were empowered to negotiate.

"People ... were not happy with Mullah Mansour‎ when he agreed with ‎Pakistan ... to hold a meeting with Kabul," said a Taliban commander based in Quetta. "The Qatar office wasn't taken into confidence before taking such an important decision."

The Quetta shura has sent a six-member team to Qatari capital Doha to meet with one of its leaders, Tayyab Agha, seeking his support for Mansour, according to another Taliban source close to the leadership.

RELATIONS WITH PAKISTAN

The divisions threaten a formal split in the Taliban. They also provide an opening to rival Islamic State (IS), the Middle East-based extremist movement that has attracted renegade Taliban commanders in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This month, two Afghan militant groups swore allegiance to Islamic State, and more could follow suit.

Despite threats both internal and external, Taliban fighters have been gaining territory in Afghanistan, where they are trying to topple the Western-backed government.

This week another district, this time in the south, fell to insurgents, who have exploited the absence of most NATO troops after they withdrew at the end of last year.

Opponents of Mansour criticize him for being too close to Pakistan's military, which has long been accused of supporting the Afghan insurgency to maintain regional influence.

Pakistan has pushed Taliban leaders based in its territory hard to come to the negotiating table at the request of ally China and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

But many Taliban, and some Afghan officials, fear the recent talks are a ploy by Pakistan to retain control. The Pakistanis deny that.

Still, Mansour cannot afford to alienate Pakistan, said Saifullah Mahsud of the Islamabad-based FATA Research Centre. "No matter who is in charge of the Taliban in Afghanistan, they will have no choice but to have a good relationship with the Pakistani state. It's a matter of survival," he said. "I don't think this agreement to go to the negotiating table is determined by personality; it's more about the circumstances."

Despite the opposition, Mansour retains a personal power base within the Taliban, and if he can keep the movement together it could lead to a new era for the insurgents.

Bette Dam, author of an upcoming biography of Mullah Omar, said the supreme leader's absence paralyzed many Taliban officials.

Mansour could provide a more active focus for both the movement's rank-and-file and those seeking to engage the Taliban.

"If he gets the credibility, it might not be such bad news to have Mansour replace the invisible Mullah Omar," Dam said.

(Additional reporting by Katharine Houreld in Islamabad and Jessica Donati in Kabul; Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore reached a grim milestone on Friday, three months after riots erupted in response to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody: With 45 homicides in July, the city has seen more bloodshed in a single month than it has in 43 years.

Police reported three deaths — two men shot Thursday and one on Friday. The men died at local hospitals.

With their deaths, this year's homicides reached 189, far outpacing the 119 killings by July's end in 2014. Nonfatal shootings have soared to 366, compared to 200 by the same date last year. July's total was the worst since the city recorded 45 killings in August 1972, according to The Baltimore Sun.

The seemingly Sisyphean task of containing the city's violence prompted Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to fire her police commissioner, Anthony Batts, on July 8.

"Too many continue to die on our streets," Rawlings-Blake said then. "Families are tired of dealing with this pain, and so am I. Recent events have placed an intense focus on our police leadership, distracting many from what needs to be our main focus: the fight against crime."

But the killings have not abated under Interim Commissioner Kevin Davis since then.

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In this July 30, 2015 picture, a member of the Baltimore Police Department removes crime scene tape …

Baltimore is not unique in its suffering; crimes are spiking in big cities around the country.

But while the city's police are closing cases— Davis announced arrests in three recent murders several days ago — the violence is outpacing their efforts. Davis said Tuesday the "clearance rate" is at 36.6 percent, far lower than the department's mid-40s average.

Crime experts and residents of Baltimore's most dangerous neighborhoods cite a confluence of factors: mistrust of the police; generalized anger and hopelessness over a lack of opportunities for young black men; and competition among dealers of illegal drugs, bolstered by the looting of prescription pills from pharmacies during the riot.

Federal drug enforcement agents said gangs targeted 32 pharmacies in the city, taking roughly 300,000 doses of opiates, as the riots caused $9 million in property damage in the city.

Perched on a friend's stoop, Sherry Moore, 55, said she knew "mostly all" of the young men killed recently in West Baltimore, including an 18-year-old fatally shot a half-block away. Moore said many more pills are on the street since the riot, making people wilder than usual.

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This July 30, 2015 picture shows a blighted home in west Baltimore. Murders are spiking again in Bal …

"The ones doing the violence, the shootings, they're eating Percocet like candy and they're not thinking about consequences. They have no discipline, they have no respect — they think this is a game. How many can I put down on the East side? How many can I put down on the West side?"

The tally of 42 homicides in May included Gray, who died in April after his neck was broken in police custody. The July tally likewise includes a previous death — a baby whose death in June was ruled a homicide in July.

Shawn Ellerman, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Baltimore division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said May's homicide spike was probably related to the stolen prescription drugs, a supply that is likely exhausted by now. But the drug trade is inherently violent, and turf wars tend to prompt retaliatory killings.

"You can't attribute every murder to narcotics, but I would think a good number" of them are, he said. "You could say it's retaliation from drug trafficking, it's retaliation from gangs moving in from other territories. But there have been drug markets in Baltimore for years."

Across West Baltimore, residents complain that drug addiction and crime are part of a cycle that begins with despair among children who lack educational and recreational opportunities, and extends when people can't find work.

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In this July 30, 2015 picture, balloons and candles mark a spot where a man was shot earlier in the …

"We need jobs! We need jobs!" a man riding around on a bicycle shouted to anyone who'd listen after four people were shot, three of them fatally, on a street corner in July.

More community engagement, progressive policing policies and opportunities for young people in poverty could help, community activist Munir Bahar said.

"People are focusing on enforcement, not preventing violence. Police enforce a code, a law. Our job as the community is to prevent the violence, and we've failed," said Bahar, who leads the annual 300 Men March against violence in West Baltimore.

"We need anti-violence organizations, we need mentorship programs, we need a long-term solution. But we also need immediate relief," Bahar added. "When we're in something so deep, we have to stop it before you can analyze what the root is."

Strained relationships between police and the public also play a role, according to Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Arrests plummeted and violence soared after six officers were indicted in Gray's death. Residents accused police of abandoning their posts for fear of facing criminal charges for making arrests, and said emboldened criminals were settling scores with little risk of being caught.

The department denied these claims, and police cars have been evident patrolling West Baltimore's central thoroughfares recently.

But O'Donnell said the perception of lawlessness is just as powerful than the reality.

"We have a national issue where the police feel they are the Public Enemy No. 1," he said, making some officers stand down and criminals become more brazen.

"There's a rhythm to the streets," he added. "And when people get away with gun violence, it has a long-term emboldening effect. And the good people in the neighborhood think, 'Who has the upper hand?'"

DUMA, West Bank (AP) — Suspected Jewish assailants set fire to a West Bank home on Friday and burned a sleeping Palestinian toddler to death in an attack that drew Palestinian rage and widespread Israeli condemnation. The attack, which threatens to set off another violent escalation, shines a light on the growing lawlessness of extremist Jewish settlers that Israel is either unable or unwilling to contain.

The extremists have for years staged attacks against Palestinian property, as well as mosques, churches, dovish Israeli groups and even Israeli military bases. The attacks, known as "price tags" because they exact a price for Israeli steps seen as favorable to the Palestinians, have stirred fear in Palestinians and frustration among critics who say Israel has not done enough to quell the assaults.

"This is a direct consequence of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to settler terrorism," said Palestinian official Saeb Erekat. "This is the consequence of a culture of hate funded and incentivized by the Israeli government and the impunity granted by the international community."

Friday's deadly attack comes as part of a larger trend of Jewish radicalization — one day after an anti-gay ultra-Orthodox extremist stabbed revelers at Jerusalem's Gay Pride Parade and two days after Israeli authorities indicted two young Jewish activists for an arson attack on a famous Holy Land church. All have been strongly condemned across the Israeli political spectrum, though the recent spate of attacks has raised fears that a radicalized and violent ultraconservative fringe is growing from within the country's hard-line national-religious camp.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the attack a "war crime" and said the Palestinians would present it to the International Criminal Court as part of their case against Israel.

The extremist attacks, which most recently struck a famous church in northern Israel, have rarely caused fatal injuries, which made Friday's incident, in which 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was killed and his parents and 4-year-old brother critically wounded, all the more worrying.

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A Palestinian man inspects a house after it was torched in a suspected attack by Jewish settlers kil …

Witnesses and the Israeli military said that under cover of darkness, the attackers broke the windows of the family's home in Duma, a small village near the West Bank city of Nablus. They lobbed a fire bomb into the sleeping family's bedroom which exploded into a fireball that quickly consumed the home.

The suspects, who fled the scene, scribbled graffiti on the walls reading "Long live the Messiah," ''revenge" and "price tag," as well as a Jewish star of David. The military said they were searching for the assailants.

Riham Dawabsheh, the boy's mother, ran out of the house as she was engulfed by flames and a neighbor, Mohammed Ibrahim Dawabsheh, said he covered her in a sheet to try to extinguish the flames. She, as well as her husband Saed and son Ahmad, were taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment, where they remained in critical condition with severe burn wounds.

Duma residents blamed the incident on Israeli refusal to confront settler violence.

"We have no protection," said Abdel Haleem Dawabsheh, a teacher from Duma, who like Mohammed Dawabsheh is a member of the same clan as the victims. "Settlers burned mosques, cars, trees, attacked people in our village and in the nearby villages but nothing happened to them."

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Photos of a one-and-a-half year old boy, Ali Dawabsheh, lie in a house that had been torched in a su …

Israel says it does its best to track down the assailants and has launched recent drives to crack down on the "price tag" phenomenon. In the case of the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes arson in June, it arrested two suspects that belonged to an extremist settler youth group.

But critics say Israel doesn't enforce the law when it comes to settlers because of the political power that the settlers wield in parliament and because they are still perceived in some circles as Zionist pioneers who are settling the land like the vanguards who established the Jewish state.

"This policy creates impunity for hate crimes, and encourages assailants to continue, leading to this morning's horrific result," Israeli rights group B'Tselem said in a statement.

The group said that in the past three years, Israeli civilians set fire to nine Palestinian homes in the West Bank and flung a fire bomb at a Palestinian taxi. It said no one was charged in any of the cases.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said "continued failures to effectively address impunity for repeated acts of settler violence have led to another horrific incident involving the death of an innocent life," his spokesman told reporters. "This must end."

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Israeli policemen inspect a house after it was torched in a suspected attack by Jewish settlers, kil …

Israeli leaders rushed to condemn Friday's attack, although B'Tselem said those words were mere rhetoric if the attacks were allowed to continue.

"I am shocked over this reprehensible and horrific act. This is a terror attack in every respect. The state of Israel takes a strong line against terrorism regardless of who the perpetrators are," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, said Israel would not allow "Jewish terrorists" to carry out such acts. "We will fight against them firmly and with all means and tools at our disposal," he said. Settler leaders and their representatives in parliament also distanced themselves from the attackers.

Condemnations also came from abroad, including the European Union, which called for "zero tolerance" for settler violence, while Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, called for the perpetrators to be "promptly brought to justice." The U.S. State Department urged both sides to "maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions."

The U.N. Security Council condemned "the vicious terrorist attack," demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice and encouraged all sides "to work to lower tension, reject violence, avoid all provocations, and seek a path toward peace."

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Israeli policemen inspect a house after it was torched in a suspected attack by Jewish settlers kill …

Israeli opposition leader Issac Herzog said Israel needed to take practical steps including arrest without trial or charge, as is done for Palestinian assailants, in order to stamp out the attacks.

"We are dealing with Jewish terror that we haven't seen in a long time," he said, at the hospital near Tel Aviv where Riham and Ahmad Dawabsheh were being treated. "This phenomenon must be uprooted."

Other Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, visited the family at the hospital.

Herzog compared the attack to the killing last year of 16-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was burned alive last summer by Jewish extremists in a revenge attack for the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teens. The violence eventually spiraled into what later became a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

Tensions have been high since last year's war and with no peace negotiations and the Palestinians taking their case to the international court, incidents such as Friday's could easily spark wider unrest.

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Israeli policemen inspect a house after it was torched in a suspected attack by Jewish settlers kill …

Friday's attack forced those simmering tensions to boil over, with about 2,000 Palestinian protesters clashing with Israeli security forces in the West Bank city of Hebron at a previously planned demonstration, the military said. It added that forces fired into the rock-throwing crowd after it did not disperse and "a hit was confirmed," without elaborating - a reference to someone being shot. Israeli forces shot at another Palestinian near the city of Ramallah, after he hurled a fire bomb at them, the military said. Palestinian hospital officials said he was in critical condition after being shot in the chest.

In Gaza, Palestinian health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said the Israeli military shot and killed a Gazan man who had approached Israel's security fence. The Israeli military said it did not know the man's condition, but said troops opened fire at the man's legs when he and another man neared the fence.

The Israeli military deployed troop reinforcements to the West Bank to quell further clashes and Netanyahu also placed a rare call to Abbas to express his outrage and call for calm.

In the village of Duma, the interior walls of the one-floor home were blackened and still radiated heat as Israeli police surveyed the scene Friday morning. A brown couch was covered in white ash as charred debris lay strewn around the property. A second house nearby, which was empty, was also set on fire.

Inside the torched home, relatives scraped through the ash and soot to salvage any belongings. They found a partly burnt photograph of the slain child and his bottle, still one-third full of milk.

"I never imagined that this could happen, that someone could come and burn people alive while they are sleeping," said Hassan Dawabsheh, the slain child's uncle. "I don't know what those people were thinking. What do they have inside their hearts and minds?"

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Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Matt Lee in Washington and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed reporting.