Israeli occupation troops on Sunday killed six Palestinians, including three children, while wounding at least 12 others in separate incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources told AFP.
A Palestinian man, 30-year-old Falah Zidan, was shot dead late Sunday during an exchange of gunfire with Israeli troops. Medical sources said he was hit by a bullet on the edge of the Balata refugee camp near Nablus.
In the southern Gaza Strip near Rafah late Sunday, three Palestinians, including two children, were killed and nine others wounded by an Israeli missile attack, Palestinian security sources said.
The two children killed were an eight-year-old girl, Alaa, and her five-year-old brother Soleiman. The third victim was their 32-year-old father, Samir Abu El Az, said AFP and reports.
But according to Haaretz, Palestinian sources reported Sunday that the father was a member the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, identifying him as Samir Abu Zeid, and his daughter as Inas.
Haaretz quoted the sources as saying that they were killed Sunday around 11:00pm by an explosion caused by two missles fired by the Israeli army at his home. Nine other Palestinians were wounded, some of them seriously.
The Israeli army spokeman claimed that the three were killed by a Palestinian-fired mortar that missed its intended target - an army base next to Rafah - and landed on Abu Zeid's home.
"There was no assassination attempt in Rafah. The [Israeli army] did not fire missiles or shells in the city," military sources were quoted by Haaretz as saying Sunday.
The killings triggered angry reactions from Palestinians, who consider it the first assassination operation targeting an activist and his family.
Israeli public radio reported that army positions in the sector, close to the Egyptian border, had been fired on.
Earlier Sunday in Rafah, Mohamed Abu Arar, 13, was shot when a group of Palestinian youths pelted Israeli troops with stones. He was hit in the chest with a live bullet when the soldiers opened fire, and died shortly afterwards in Rafah hospital.
Also on Sunday, 38-year-old Maen Abu Lawi was fatally wounded and three other Palestinians slightly injured when Israeli troops opened fire on the group as they tried to skirt round an Israeli roadblock south of Nablus.
The shooting occurred as a group of Palestinians, apparently frustrated by having to wait at an Israeli checkpoint inside the West Bank, walked through neighboring fields to avoid the control point.
The Israelis opened fire on them, hitting Abu Lawi in the neck, hospital officials said. He died later in Nablus hospital.
Palestinian officials say that over 40 political leaders and resistance fighters have been killed under Israel's assassination policy, variously called by the euphemisms "targeted killings," "liquidations," "surgical strikes," and "interception operations."
AFP's latest death tally for the Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 558 Palestinians, and 146 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
Israel’s wounded number in the high hundreds, according to army sources, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society puts the number of Palestinians injured at over 14,000.
Amnesty International reported early this year that almost 100 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli soldiers, nearly all in situations where the occupation troops were under no immediate threat.
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began last September – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
