A Palestinian policeman was killed and seven others were wounded Thursday when Israel bombarded the West Bank city of Nablus in "retaliation" for ambushes that wounded four Jewish settlers, one of them seriously, said reports.
Israel unleashed tank and machinegun fire on Palestinian police posts soon after the attacks, killing 22-year-old Mohammad Ata Abu Fayyadh as other confrontations raged across the region despite a mid-June ceasefire brokered by the United States, said the Palestinian news agency, WAFA.
The Israeli army said that it had entered Palestinian controlled Area A near Nablus, taking control of a hill that overlooked the site of a Palestinian ambush, and that tanks had shelled a Palestinian preventive security outpost in the area, destroying it, said Haaretz newspaper.
The Israeli army hit Nablus after Jewish settler Erez Shmulyan, 26, was shot in the head at close range by Palestinians reportedly disguised in Israeli army uniforms near the West Bank settlement of Bar Harha close to Nablus.
His wife and baby daughter, who were in the car with him, were lightly injured, said Israeli reports.
The military wing of Fateh movement, Al Aqsa Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement to Al Jazeera satellite TV channel.
Another settler was critically wounded in a drive-by shooting near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of the West Bank trouble-spot of Hebron, settler sources told AFP.
A Palestinian passerby was also lightly wounded in the same attack, said the agency.
Al Jazeera reported that Israeli troops had imposed a total blockade on Hawara village in southern Nablus and also shelled a nearby village, Kufu Qallil.
In Gaza, Israeli tanks shelled Khan Yunis city earlier in the day, destroying several Palestinian houses, said WAFA.
There were no reports of causalties.
Since the fall 2000 outbreak of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, CNN reports that Palestinians have killed over 112 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to CNN, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and over 458 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to Amnesty International, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children.
In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded, and over 520 killed.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
