Israeli troops shot dead a six-year-old Palestinian boy as they opened fire on stone-throwers in Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Bassam Saadi was hit in his chest when Israeli troops opened fire with a machine-gun mounted on a tank at a group of children, also wounding a 12-year-old boy, a Jenin hospital official told AFP. The children were throwing stones at Israeli tanks, the sources said.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli tanks laid siege to a Palestinian Authority (PA) building (moqataa) in Hebron, as the army hunted Palestinian activists and entered more West Bank villages. Witnesses to the shelling of the building said Wednesday that the army was trying to smoke out Palestinians holed up inside the building that houses PA offices.
Following sustained heavy shelling, a Palestinian emerged from the building and gave himself up, AFP reported. A fire broke out in part of the moqataa and an Israeli bulldozer smashed down the main door.
Israeli public radio confirmed that the PA building was being shelled. Israeli media sources said about 150 Palestinians holed up in the building surrendered. Among them, 20 men who were described by Israel as “wanted activists.” Israel's army, however, said dozens of wanted Palestinians were holed up. Soldiers said the siege would continue until they surrendered.
"We have all the time in the world," Lt. Col. David Blumenfeld said in Hebron, adding the army had already arrested 40 Palestinians and seized 100 bombs and large amounts of explosives in buildings in the Palestinian Authority compound.
Israeli troops backed by several jeeps moved into Halhul, south of Hebron, imposing a curfew and firing tear-gas grenades and rubber bullets. Soldiers also entered the village of Hossam west of Bethlehem and launched house-to-house searches after imposing a curfew, Palestinian security sources said.
Israeli troops also arrested about 30 Palestinians in separate sweeps on the West Bank, including security officers and suspects accused by Israel of belonging to groups behind suicide attacks.
Five Palestinians were nabbed overnight in the Hebron region, including two wanted for activities hostile to Israel, military sources said. Residents in the town of Dura confirmed the arrests and told AFP that one of them was a Palestinian intelligence officer and the other from the preventive security.
Twenty men were detained in the northern West Bank town of Tubas, where a Palestinian police station was also bulldozed by the army, Palestinian security sources said.
A local leader of the Islamic resistance movement group Hamas, Ibrahim Abu Arra, and a Palestinian security guard, Abdel Hamid Abu Arra, were arrested in the nearby village of Aqqaba, the sources added.
Near the northern town of Jenin the army arrested Mahmud Issa, a 34-year-old member of the military branch of the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades. Soldiers, backed by a helicopter, laid ambush to Issa who was hiding in a hilly area as the chopper opened fire to force him out into the open where he was arrested, his family told AFP.
Meanwhile in the Gaza Strip, soldiers found a tunnel used to "smuggle weapons" from Egypt to the Palestinian territories in the town of Rafah which straddles the border, Israeli military sources said.
In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian street vendor was shot and wounded in the foot by Israeli soldiers when they opened fire at houses in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, medical and security officials said.
Soldiers also destroyed the homes of three Palestinians in the Rafah region, security sources said. Israeli tanks deployed near the Rafah border post also fired four shells at homes, causing damage but no casualties, the sources said. Soldiers came under a hail of grenade fire. (Albawaba.com)
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