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Israel Uses U.S.-Made F-16s to Raid Palestinian
Territories
OCCUPIED GAZA CITY, August 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israel's U.S.-made F-16 warplanes attacked Palestinian targets in three towns in the occupied Gaza and the West Bank while a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was killed overnight when he was hit by Israeli tank fire, news agencies reported Sunday.
The F-16 fighter jets launched missiles on the Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza City at 0500 Gaza local time (0200 GMT), news agencies reported.
Two police posts in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza plus a police headquarter in the village of Salfit in the West Bank were demolished, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Sunday.
Three Palestinian police officers were wounded in the Gaza City attack, Palestinian General Abdel Razek al-Majeida said.
The five-story police building in Gaza was ablaze and completely destroyed, he added.
Eight other Palestinians, all civilians, were injured in the air attack on Salfit, near Nablus, where a Palestinian building was razed to the ground by an Israeli missile, Palestinian security sources said.
A spokesman for the Israeli occupation forces reported direct hits on all Palestinian targets, Israeli Ha'aretz Daily said.
Israeli authorities claim that the Israeli bombardment came in retaliation for the shooting ambush, claimed Sunday by the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, on the Jerusalem-Modi'in road Saturday night that killed the two Palestinian men who carried out the operation and three Israeli occupation soldiers in a base in Gaza, Ha'aretz added.
Sunday's Israeli raid is the third with American made F-16 warplanes since the start of Al-Aqsa Intifada or uprising in September.
An official from the Israeli Ministry of Defense said on June 20 that a deal was signed with the U.S. to buy 50 new F-16 fighters worth two billion dollars, paid for with annual American aid to Israel.
The official said that the additional U.S.-made fighters would boost Israeli air force capabilities, which already depend greatly on the F-16s. The Israeli occupation army currently owns up to 700 fighter planes.
Israel also unleashed tanks and troops in the Gaza Strip earlier Sunday, triggering a fierce gun battle, which left one Palestinian dead and five others wounded - one of them seriously - Palestinian officials said.
A Palestinian police sergeant, Alaa Abu Bakr, was killed by shrapnel, and at least two more Palestinians were wounded, hospital doctors said.
Several hours before the aerial assault, Israeli occupation ground forces thrust into Palestinian-controlled territory in the Rafah area of southern Gaza near the border with Egypt, and attacked positions of the Palestinian national security branch, Ha'aretz Daily added.
The troops penetrated about two kilometers (1.25 miles) into Rafah, setting off a battle that included barrages of shells and heavy machine-gun fire.
Israeli occupation forces destroyed a national security command structure near Rafah junction, two roadblocks in the area of the settlement of Morag, and a position on the road between the settlement of Netzarim and the Karni crossing into Israel.
At mosques in Rafah, calls went out over the loudspeakers urging residents to join
jihad or a holy struggle against the Israeli occupation forces.
"The people of Rafah are defending the city in order to teach the Israelis a lesson,'' said Rafah's governor, Majid al-Ajha.
At around 3 a.m. local time Sunday, the Israeli occupation forces began withdrawing from Rafah, residents and officials said.
According to western news agencies, the latest deaths bring to 742 the number of people killed since the revolt against Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories broke out last September - 569 Palestinians, mostly teenagers and children, and 150 Israelis.
In a separate incident, Palestinian gunmen shot and killed an Israeli man Sunday in an attack in northern Israel, near the demarcation line with the West Bank, Israeli public radio said, quoting police officials.
The attack occurred near the occupation settlement of Kibbutz Maggal, close to the autonomous Palestinian town of Zeita to the north of Tulkarem.
It was the second deadly roadside shooting attack on Israeli occupation targets in 24 hours.
Palestinian gunmen from an armed wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction claimed responsibility for a shooting on a road leading from Jerusalem across the West Bank to the coast, which killed a Jewish settler couple and injured their two
children.
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