The IDF has intensified Operation ‘Brothers’ Keeper,’ IDF officials reported Sunday morning, and have searched in 1,400 different sites total since last week in an effort to locate three kidnapped teenagers. 

As of Sunday, the IDF has shifted its focus to the northwest of Hevron, for a period of approximately 48 hours, they said.

While the IDF continues to emphasize that the assumption is that the boys are alive, IDF special units in the Naval forces have also begun searching underground and underwater for bodies. 

Over 350 Palestinian Arabs – mostly Hamas terrorists – have been arrested since the operation began last Friday, the IDF announced Sunday. 

Saturday night, nine more suspects were apprehended in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley; one Palestinian Arab was accidentally killed in Shechem (Nablus) after approaching IDF forces.

The suspect began to approach a base “in a threatening manner,” an IDF spokesman told AFP Sunday morning. 

When he failed to respond to warning shots fired in the air, they fired towards him.

“Initial inquiry suggests that the suspect was mentally unstable,” a military statement said.