News Briefs

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- The Israeli family murdered in their Rishon le Tzion home were likely stabbed to death by a professional killer, according to an autopsy.

Israelis reacted with horror over the weekend to the murder of six members of the Oshrenko family.

Among the three generations of victims found stabbed to death Saturday in their burning home were a 3-year-old girl and 4-month-old boy.

The autopsy also showed that the father of the children wrestled with the killer, reported Ha'aretz. The family was buried Sunday afternoon.

The members of the Oshrenko family killed were Revital, 3, and Netanel, 4 months; their parents, Tatiana, 28, and Dimitry, 32; and grandparents Edward and Ludmilla, both 56. Tatiana and Dimitry, Russian émigrés, operated clubs and a restaurant for Russian Israelis.

"Even by the standards of the Russian or Caucasian underworld, what took place in the apartment of this family was exceptional," a police officer told Ha'aretz.

Police on Sunday raided the restaurant in Rishon le Tzion, questioning employees as well as the relatives and friends of the family. The investigation is under a media gag order.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed "pain and shock" over the murders of the family, calling the violence "horrifying" and "terrible" at the beginning of Sunday's regular Cabinet meeting. He offered his condolences to the family, as well as to Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov, a friend of the Oshrenkos.

The family had celebrated Revital's birthday last Friday. The next morning, firefighters were called to the apartment to put out a fire and discovered the bodies upon breaking down the door to the apartment.

They said the victims had died from being stabbed, and not due to the fire.

Israel, U.S. Set for Defense Drill

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Israel and the United States are set to begin an air defense drill that will simulate a missile attack on Israel.

The largest-ever drill between the two states, known as Juniper Cobra 10, will begin Wednesday and last two weeks.

It is the fifth in a series of biennial exercises, according to the Israel Defense Force.

About 1,000 U.S. European Command personnel and a similar number of IDF personnel will participate in the exercise.

During the exercise, which will simulate long-range missile attacks on Israel from Iran, Syria and Lebanon, small numbers of U.S. forces will be temporarily deployed to a number of locations in Israel in the vicinity of civilian areas.

"This exercise is not in response to any world events," according to the IDF, which noted that the countries began planning the exercise a year-and-a-half ago.

Wanted Back: Kafka Manuscript

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Israel is demanding that Germany return the original manuscript of Franz Kafka's The Trial.

It was brought to Tel Aviv from Prague in 1939, but sold to Germany in 1988 for $2 million, and now sits in the German Museum of Modern Literature.

The Israel National Library says that the manuscript was illegally sold, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

Kafka's close friend and executor of his will, Max Brod, inherited Kafka's works, but instead of burning them as the writer requested, published The Trial.

He took the original manuscript and other Kafka papers with him to Palestine. When he died in 1969, he left them to his secretary, Esther Hoffe.

Hoffe sold The Trial manuscript at Sotheby's Auction House in London to the German government.