The evening of June 12 was the last night either of the men were seen. One of them was a 29-year-old barber named Marwan Qawasmeh. The other was a scraggly, intense-looking locksmith named Amer Abu Aisha last seen dancing at a wedding, his father told reporters, before he suddenly left. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going, and his mother, who also saw him that night, later recalled she did not suspect anything out of the ordinary.

That same night, three Israeli teenagers went missing while hitchhiking nearby the West Bank city of Hebron. Following one of the most aggressive searches in the past decade, which marshaled the political establishment’s attention and culminated in the social media campaign #avengeourboys, the teens were found dead on Monday.

The discovery has further inflamed relations between Israelis and Palestinians. Just three months ago, Israelis and Palestinians were in the midst of peace negotiations; now, Hamas is threatening the “gates of hell” and Israel is launching airstrikes.

The lead suspects in the boys’ abductions are Aisha and Qawasmeh. The fact that they’ve been missing since the teen’s disappearance is “clear evidence they have links with the abduction,” an anonymous senior Palestinian intelligence official told the Times of Israel.

On Monday night, hours after the teenagers’ bodies were discovered, Israeli forces blew the door off Qawasmeh’s home, but neither of the suspects were found. “At this time, thousands of soldiers and commanders are continuing their mission,” the head of the Israel Defense Forces Central Command told the news organization. “For us, the mission is not over.”

Relatives of Amer Abu Aisha, a Hamas man named by Israel as one of the two prime suspects, inspect his house after it was blown up by Israeli army on July 1, 2014, in the West Bank town of Hebron. (Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)

Both men reportedly come from families with connections to Hamas and have spent time in Israeli jail. Qawasmeh has been arrested five times and once allegedly told Israeli intelligence that the Hamas military wing had recruited him. Aisha, meanwhile, has been arrested twice, Israeli authorities say, and his family has deep ties to the group. Aisha’s fatherspent time in Israeli prisons for alleged connections with Hamas. And his brother, who was killed in 2005 after he attempted to throw an explosive at Israeli soldiers, was also suspected of a Hamas affiliation.

But from there, the story begins to blur. While not condemning the abduction, Hamas denied responsibility for the teens’ death. “The story of the disappearance and killing of the three settlers is based on the Israeli narrative only,” Sami Abu Zuhri told Agence France-Presse on Monday. “The Israeli occupation is trying to refer to this narrative in order to justify its wide-scale war against our people, against the resistance and against Hamas.”

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal likewise told Al Jazeera, “We cannot deny nor can we confirm that Hamas committed the kidnappings.” He added: “We do not have information about what happened.”

Such hesitance to take a firm stance may speak to the complicated family history of at least one of the suspects, wrote longtime Mideast analyst Shlomi Eldar in Al-Monitor. Eldar reported Qawasmeh belongs to one the “three largest clans” in the Mount Hebron region, which is “known for identifying with Hamas.”

“They are an old and well-known Palestinian family,” the Los Angeles Times said of them in 2003, “a clan of doctors and judges, mechanics and storekeepers — and suicide bombers.”

The family of Amer Abu Aisha, who Israel has identified as one of two suspects in the disappearance of three Israeli teenagers, hold his picture during an interview in their in the West Bank city of Hebron on June 27. (Majdi Mohammed/AP)

The family has sometimes operated on the fringes of Hamas,wrote Eldar, who suspects the timing of the kidnappings is too convenient. “Each time Hamas has reached an understanding with Israel about a cease-fire … at least one member of the family has been responsible for planning or initiating a suicide attack, and any understanding with Israel, achieved after considerable effort, were suddenly laid waste,” Eldar said.

In 2003, the family unleashed a grisly campaign of suicide bombings. One got on an Israeli bus in the port city of Haifa and blew himself up. Another infiltrated a settlers’ neighborhood in Hebron and detonated explosives strapped to his waist. One more opened fire inside another Jewish settlement. Each, reported the Los Angeles Times, were in their 20s.

Finally, Israel forces shot and killed the clan’s leader, Adullah Qawasmeh —the uncle of suspected kidnapper Marwan Qawasmeh. Afterward, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the killing was “an essential operation meant to provide security to Israel,” though Secretary of State Colin Powellcriticized it as a “possible impediment to progress” for peace.

Now again, Eldar wrote, it appears as though the family has acted in way that Hamas had neither expected nor wanted. “Marwan Qawasmeh and Amar Abu Aisha have brought Hamas to a place where its leadership never intended to go,” Al-Monitor reported. “By kidnapping three Israelis, the Qawasmeh family decided to take the leaders there anywhere.”

While the Obama administration struggles to speed up delivery of U.S. military assistance to the government of Iraq, Vladimir Putin has already delivered not only fighter jets but also the pilots needed to fly them, diplomatic sources told The Daily Beast.

On Monday, Russian television trumpetedthe arrival of the first 5 of 12 promised Sukhoi Su-25 combat fighter jets to the Iraqi government, saying it had also sent “trainers” to help the Iraqis use them. Gen. Anwar Hama Ameen, the commander of the Iraqi Air Force, told the New York Times the fighter jets would enter the battle against ISIS within a few days, after which the Russian trainers would leave Iraq. He claimed Iraq had plenty of pilots with “long experience” flying the Su-25.

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Perhaps. But diplomatic sources told The Daily Beast that Russian pilots will fly the planes due to a lack of Iraqi pilots with the proper training. The Su-25 planes were used in the Iraq-Iran war but have not been employed in Iraq since at least 2002, when Iraq’s military was controlled by the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein.

The Russian assistance to Iraq is not a strategic decision by Moscow to commit to a long-term security relationship with Iraq, the sources said, but rather a limited measure to address the ISIS crisis. It’s also a convenient way to draw a public distinction between Moscow and Washington, whose direct military assistance to Iraq has been minimal and slow.

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“This is very opportunistic and it opens up a lot of questions about that relationship, where it’s going, and how Russia is aligning itself in Iraq,” a senior congressional aide told The Daily Beast on Monday. “It’s definitely something we should be concerned about but it’s not panic time yet.”

If and when Russian jets begin to fly in Iraq, they will be entering an ever more crowded airspace that reportedly includes U.S. and also Iranian drones. But the U.S. is not currently working directly with Russia tactical or logistical military coordination in Iraq—even though Moscow and Washington suddenly face a common foe there.

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President Obama and President Putin spoke over the phone last week as the Iraq crisis worsened. But the conversation focused almost solely on Ukraine; the two leaders didn’t discuss Iraqi substantively much at all.

“As you probably saw, Iraq was not listed as a topic in our recent call readout. We did not mention Iraq because the President and President Putin did not have a substantive discussion on Iraq,” National Security Council Press Secretary Caitlin Hayden told The Daily Beast. “To the extent it was discussed, the two Leaders agreed that Secretary [of State John] Kerry would discuss with Russian Foreign Minister [Sergei] Lavrov, given Secretary Kerry’s recent travel to Iraq.”

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Russian soldiers unload a Russian Sukhoi SU-25 plane in al-Muthanna Iraqi military base at Baghdad a …

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President Obama announced Monday he would send an additional 200 American military personnel to Iraq, to protect the Green Zone and provide intelligence support. But last week the president ruled out direct U.S. involvement in combat inside Iraq for now.

“American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq, but we will help Iraqis as they take the fight to terrorists who threaten the Iraqi people in the region and American interests as well,” he said.

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If Russian pilots begin flying attack missions in Iraq, Moscow will be doing the job Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki first asked of the United States. Russia likely won’t officially acknowledge its pilots’ role, if they do carry out strikes or air support missions for Iraqi government troops. Similarly, in the Syrian civil war, there are unconfirmed reports that pilots from North Korea are flying jets in combat.

At Monday’s State Department press briefing, Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the United States has no problem with Iraq acquiring Russian military aircraft. Last week, the head of Iraq’s Air Force announced Russia would also send a batch of MI-35 and MI-28 Russian helicopters.

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“We don’t oppose legal Iraqi efforts to meet their urgent military requirements,” she said. “In fact, as you know, we’re expediting our own assistance, and they have purchased military equipment from a variety of countries in the past, and so it’s not a surprise that that has continued.”

The administration has been trying to speed up the delivery of F-16 fighter jets and 24 Apache helicopters to Iraq. U.S. lawmakers, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, previously held up those transfers over concerns about Maliki’s authoritarian tendencies and mistreatment of Iraq’s Sunni majority. Menendez lifted his objections to the deliveries in January, but even in the best case scenario, 2 F-16s and some Apaches would arrive in Iraq in the fall and most not until at least next year.

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American pilots aren’t part of the deal, so it will take several more months to train Iraqis to fly the F-16s and Apaches even after they are delivered. The U.S. has sent 75 Hellfire missiles to Iraq, but the Times reported the Iraqi military only has two aircraft capable of firing them.

Last week, Maliki complained publicly about the slowness of the delivery of the U.S. aircraft, saying he regretted not buying military hardware from other countries such as Russia.

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“I'll be frank and say that we were deluded when we signed the contract [with the U.S.]," al-Maliki said June 26. "We should have sought to buy other jet fighters like British, French and Russian to secure the air cover for our forces… If we had air cover, we would have averted what had happened.”

The senior Congressional aide said that there was really no way that the U.S. jets and helicopters would have been ready for use in Iraq, even if there hadn’t been approval delays on Capitol Hill. The procurement and delivery processes are lengthy and the Iraqi government has also been slow on finalizing the transfer deal, the aide said.

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“When Maliki is complaining that we are not delivering, that’s totally misinformed,” the aide said. “The notion that somehow we could have expedited this and Iraq would have trained pilots to fly them by now is not credible.”

Related from The Daily Beast

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Rifle shots rang out Tuesday in the streets of the largest city in eastern Ukraine and panicked residents fled gunbattles as fighting flared with new intensity after the president ended a cease-fire.

Hopes for peace in eastern Ukraine appeared to sink, as separatist rebels fought to gain further ground and badly-trained and disorganized government troops did not seem capable of crushing the mutiny.

The shaky cease-fire had given European leaders 10 days to search in vain for a peaceful settlement, and its end raised the prospect of an escalation in a conflict that has already killed more than 400 people since April.

President Petro Poroshenko had called a unilateral cease-fire to try to persuade the rebels to lay down their weapons and hold peace talks. Some of the rebels signed onto the cease-fire as tentative negotiations began, but each side accused the other of repeated violations.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin argued that substantive talks with representatives in eastern Ukraine had failed to start in earnest and that the cease-fire announced by Poroshenko amounted to an ultimatum to the rebels to disarm.

The Russian leader also denounced the Western threat of sanctions as blackmail, adding that Moscow wouldn't accept "ultimatums and mentor's tone."

Europe mustn't allow "any unconstitutional coups and interference into the domestic affairs of sovereign states" and should steer clear of "inciting radical and neo-Nazi forces" to avoid destabilization, Putin said.

Russia has cast February's ouster of Ukraine's former pro-Moscow president following massive protests as a coup conducted by radical nationalists and neo-Nazis.

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A pro-Russian fighter runs past a huge poster during fighting near a regional police department in d …

In Donetsk, the capital of Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, many streets were deserted and gunfire filled the air Tuesday as rebels besieged the headquarters of the regional Interior Ministry. After a five-hour gunbattle, the rebels captured the compound, leaving the body of a plainclothes police officer outside.

In Kiev, the interior minister said Ukrainian forces had repelled the rebel attack in Donetsk, but an AP journalist on the ground saw that clearly was not the case.

Residents appeared traumatized.

"I was driving and some people appeared with automatic weapons," said Vitaly, who said he was too fearful to give his last name. "They put me and my girlfriend on the ground and then they said: 'Run away from here!'

"I don't know who is fighting whom. We are standing here. We are afraid and shaking."

It wasn't clear what prompted the rebel attack on the Interior Ministry building that houses regional police, who have peacefully coexisted with the rebels even though they nominally remained subordinate to the central government in Kiev.

The Interfax news agency quoted Sergei Kavtaradze, a spokesman for the insurgents in Donetsk, as saying the attack was launched by militants from the neighboring Luhansk region. There was no way to immediately confirm his claim.

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A pro-Russian fighter stands guard at a checkpoint in the village of Karlivka near Donetsk, eastern …

Poroshenko announced the end of the cease-fire late Monday and by early Tuesday the military had made artillery and air strikes against separatist positions, Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkovsky told the Interfax news agency. He said one service member was killed and 17 wounded in the previous 24 hours, and that a military jet was damaged.

There was no comment on any casualties from the rebel side.

Near the village of Karlovka, 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of Donetsk, residents told The Associated Press that government forces and rebels began firing heavy weapons at each other across a bridge early Tuesday, just hours after the cease-fire expired.

"There was shooting near the water. Even the water was splattering," said Inna Vladimirovna, who gave only her name and patronymic, fearful of being identified. "We know when they are just shooting to scare and when they are shooting to kill."

Ukrainian troops appeared to score some success Tuesday, with Poroshenko congratulating them on dislodging the rebels from one of the three checkpoints on the border with Russia that they had seized.

European leaders have been pressing Putin to persuade the rebels to lay down their weapons. The West has accused Russia of fomenting the rebellion with troops and weapons.

Russia has rejected those claims, saying that Russians who crossed into the east to fight with the rebels were private citizens. It says its influence with the rebels is limited and urges the Ukrainian government to negotiate directly with them.

Putin warned Tuesday that by ending the cease-fire, Poroshenko had made himself politically responsible for the fighting that began months before he was inaugurated in early June.

Poroshenko held four-way phone talks for hours with Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande in the last two days but said the rebels' failure to meet his conditions made it impossible to extend the cease-fire.

In Brussels, the European Union's 28 governments decided Tuesday they were not ready to hit Russia with a new round of sanctions over Ukraine and put off a decision until Monday, according to an EU official.

That proposal would target those responsible for fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine, according to a diplomat from a major EU country, and could include travel bans and asset freezes for both individuals and companies. The EU has so far sanctioned only individuals.

Both the EU official and the diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't allowed to discuss the closed-door talks publicly.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned "the persistent unlawful violence" by armed militia groups in eastern Ukraine and urged them to lay down their weapons.

"The secretary-general reiterates that a continuation of hostilities can only further exacerbate an already precarious situation," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

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Associated Press writers David McHugh in Kiev, Ukraine, Juergen Baetz in Brussels, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iraq is increasingly turning to other governments like Iran, Russia and Syria to help beat back a rampant insurgency because it cannot wait for additional American military aid, Baghdad's top envoy to the U.S. said Tuesday.

Such an alliance could test the Obama administration's influence overseas and raise risks for the U.S. as some of its main global opponents consider joining forces. Moreover, such a partnership could also solidify a Shiite-led crescent across much of the Mideast at a time when the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq is trying to create an Islamic state through the region.

Iraqi Ambassador Lukman Faily stopped short of describing enduring military relationships with any of the other nations that are offering to help Iraq fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. And he said Baghdad would prefer to work with the U.S.

But Faily said delays in U.S. aid have forced Iraq to seek help elsewhere. He also called on the U.S. to launch targeted airstrikes as a "crucial" step against the insurgency. So far, the Obama administration has resisted airstrikes in Iraq but has not ruled them out.

"Time is not on our side," Faily told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "Further delay only benefits the terrorists."

His comments came as chaos in Baghdad continued.

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A militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the st …

Despite a constitutional deadline to name a new parliament speaker, minority Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers walked out of the first session of the newly seated legislature on Tuesday, dashing hopes for the quick formation of a new government that could hold the country together in the face of a militant blitz. Hours later, ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on Muslims worldwide to join the battle and help build an Islamic state in land that the extremist group controls in Iraq and Syria.

The Obama administration has been hesitant to send much military aid to Iraq for fear of dragging the U.S. into another years-long Mideast war. President Barack Obama has ruled out sending combat troops back into Iraq after withdrawing U.S. forces in 2011, but this week sent more soldiers to Baghdad to help bolster the U.S. Embassy. All told, officials said, there are about 750 U.S. troops in Iraq — about half of which are advising Iraqi counterterror forces fight ISIL.

Since then, Washington has sold more than $10 billion in military equipment and weapons to Baghdad, and recently stepped up its surveillance and intelligence support to its security forces.

The additional 300 U.S. troops moving into Iraq this week are equipped with Army Apache attack helicopters as well as unarmed surveillance drones, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

Noting international bans on Iranian military sales, Faily said Iraq is mostly seeking Tehran's advice on how to combat ISIL — a foe that Iran has faced in Syria's civil war. ISIL is one of a number of Sunni-led groups that have been fighting for three years to force President Bashar Assad from power.

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Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, second left, attends the first session of parliament in t …

Assad is an Alawite, a religious sect that is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is Shiite. Faily said Baghdad would be willing to work with the Syrian government to control the border between the two nations, and keep it from falling into ISIL's hands.

And he said Russia's fighter jets and pilots have been willing to fill Iraq's air support needs.

Plans to send U.S. fighter jets to Iraq have been stalled, although State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said some F-16s could be delivered this fall.

Harf said the Iraqi government needs to finish its plans for sheltering the fighter jets, training pilots to fly them, and completing financial and administrative details before the planes can be delivered.

"The Iraqis have been slow in terms of moving that part of the process forward," Harf said. "Now we're in a place where some of those things are made more challenging by the security situation."

David Petraeus on ISIS threat: “You could see it c …Play Video

She said the U.S. does not object to other governments sending legal aid to Baghdad. But she said the U.S. has "been very clear" that the Syrian government isn't a legitimate source of support to Iraq.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia gave the United Nations $500 million on Tuesday to help the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, where more than 1 million people have been displaced. The U.N. said more than 2,400 people were killed in Iraq in June, making it the deadliest month in the country in years.

The Sunni-dominated Saudi kingdom and al-Maliki have had frosty relations for years. The donation served as an appeal to the Iraqi people as its leaders build a new government — potentially one without al-Maliki at the helm, although Faily said there was no indication that the prime minister would leave his post.

In an interview, Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir said the donation aims to help Iraqis of all religions, sects and ethnic backgrounds.

"It should go, we hope, a long way toward easing the suffering of the Iraqi people in Iraq," al-Jubeir said.

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On Twitter follow Lara Jakes at https://twitter.com/larajakesAP and Robert Burns at https://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

Envoy: Iraq can't wait on U.S. military aid

An Iraqi ambassador says his country will accept more help from Iran and Russia if America doesn't help.
Urges airstrikes

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Homeland Security buses carrying migrant children and families were rerouted Tuesday to a facility in San Diego after American flag-waving protesters blocked the group from reaching a suburban processing center.

The standoff in Murrieta came after Mayor Alan Long urged residents to complain to elected officials about the plan to transfer the Central American migrants to California to ease overcrowding of facilities along the Texas-Mexico border.

Many protesters held U.S. flags, while others held signs reading "stop illegal immigration," and "illegals out!"

"We can't start taking care of others if we can't take care of our own," protester Nancy Greyson, 60, of Murrieta, told the Desert Sun newspaper.

Many of the immigrants were detained while fleeing violence and extortion from gangs in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

After the buses were blocked, federal authorities rerouted the vehicles to a freeway and then to a customs and border facility in San Diego within view of the Mexico border.

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Protesters turn back three buses carrying 140 immigrants as they attempt to enter the Murrieta U.S. …

The three buses were trailed by a half-dozen news crews during the two-hour trip. People near the San Diego facility were surprised by the caravan.

Juan Silva, 27, a welder in Chula Vista, said he thought officials were transporting drug traffickers. Then he heard the buses were carrying migrant families.

"I don't think people in that town should be against little kids," he said about the protesters in Murrieta. "We're not talking about rapists. We're talking about human beings. How would they feel if it was their kids?"

After the migrants are processed, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will decide who can be released while awaiting deportation proceedings.

Earlier in the day, a chartered plane landed in San Diego with 136 migrants on board, according to a federal Department of Homeland Security official who was not authorized to be named when speaking on the issue.

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An unidentified protester, left, argues with American citizen Lupillo Rivera, brother of Mexican-Ame …

It was the first flight planned for California under the federal government's effort to ease the crunch in the Rio Grande Valley and deal with the flood of Central American children and families fleeing to the United States.

The government is also planning to fly migrants to Texas cities and another site in California, and it has already taken some migrants to Arizona.

More than 52,000 unaccompanied children have been detained after crossing the Texas-Mexico border since October in what President Barack Obama has called a humanitarian crisis. Many of the migrants are under the impression that they will receive leniency from U.S. authorities.

Another flight was expected to take 140 migrants to a facility in El Centro, California, on Wednesday, said Lombardo Amaya, president of the El Centro chapter of the Border Patrol union. The Border Patrol would not confirm that arrival date.

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Associated Press writer Amy Taxin in Santa Ana contributed to this report.