Israeli occupation army attacks Palestinian towns, kills 7 in 24 hours
Israeli occupation forces, backed by some 40 tanks and helicopter gunships, attacked early Thursday a Palestinian refugee camp near Rafah at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, killing at least four civilians and injuring eight others.
Source : BASE21
by Christian / Base21 Media Activists
dvs-b@t-online.de
Israeli occupation forces, backed by some 40 tanks and helicopter gunships, attacked early Thursday a Palestinian refugee camp near Rafah at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, killing at least four civilians and injuring eight others.
Eyewitnesses said attack helicopters strafed residential neighborhoods with heavy machineguns, killing four civilians and injuring eight others.
An Israeli spokesman said four soldiers were injured when a landmine exploded beneath their tank during the operation.
In the West Bank, the Israeli army killed two more Palestinians, one in the town of Qalqilya and the other in Nablus.
Palestinian sources said Israeli soldiers manning an armored personnel carrier opened fire on Palestinian youngsters who were throwing stones at Israeli vehicles, killing 14-year-old Jihad Nazzal.
Eyewitnesses described the killing as a "cold-blooded murder",stressing that the boys posed no threat to the heavily-protected soldiers.
In Nablus, 20 kilometer south east of Qalqilya, a resistance fighter was killed and two Israeli soldiers were injured Wednesday night in an exchange of fire last night.
Earlier, Israeli occupation forces killed a Palestinian boy, Omar Mattar, at the small village of Qalandya, north of Jerusalem.
Palestinian sources said Israeli occupation troops opened fire on stone-throwing Palestinians, killing Mattar and injuring a second Palestinian boy.
In the meanwhile, the Israeli army continued to besiege the Tulkarm refugee camp in the northern West Bank for the third consecutive day amid reports of systematic persecution of local civilians.
An Israeli army Colonel has taken public responsibility for the persecution of the civilians in violation of international law.
According to eyewitnesses, trigger-happy Israeli troops ordered all men and boys at the camp between 15 and 55 to leave their homes and concentrate at two locations, the UNRWA Girl's school and the courtyard of a factory.
The estimated 2000 people were kept for many hours without food or water and then loaded on buses and lorries which took them several kilometers outside Tulkarm where they were told to get off and forbidden to go back to their homes for the coming three days.
Soldiers reportedly threatened to shoot and kill any Palestinian venturing to walk back to his home.
The Israeli army refused to comment on the mass internment and persecution of the 2000 thousand Palestinians.
Palestinian officials are complaining that Israel is taking advantage of the world's preoccupation of Iraq to carry out harsher measures against Palestinian civilians.
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