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Palestinians trying to save their belongings from the Israeli war machine
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GAZA
CITY, October 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Twenty three people
were injured when Israeli occupation troops and tanks staged an
incursion late Tuesday, October 22, into the Rafah refugee camp in the
southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
The
witnesses said about 15 tanks accompanied by a bulldozer penetrated 500
meters into the camp, on the outskirts of the town of Rafah near the
Egyptian border, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The
troops destroyed the home of
Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Qasir, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades, who was killed in a resistance operation in the Gaza Strip
earlier this year.
Ten
Palestinians were injured by the blast and taken to hospital suffering
from fractures, hospital sources said.
Thirteen
other Palestinians were also injured during the military incursion, most
of them by Israeli tank shell fire.
Earlier,
the Israeli army used a bulldozer to destroy five houses and another
building, the Palestinian security sources said.
An
Israeli military source confirmed that the army had launched an
operation in the sector.
Palestinian
news agency (WAFA) reported that eight children were injured in the
Al-Salam neighborhood in the southern parts Gaza strip.
WAFA
quoted Dr. Ali Moussa, director of Martyr Abu Youssef Al Najar Hospital
in Rafah, saying that all children were below 12 years of age and are
all injured with fractures and bruises in different parts of their
bodies.
The
injuries took place as the occupation forces destroyed a house in the
area and the building debris started flying for long distances.
Meanwhile
in Nablus, the Israeli army on Wednesday, October 23, destroyed the
house of a Palestinian resistance fighter from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah
faction near this northern West Bank city, witnesses and an army
spokesman said.
The
army dynamited the house of 27-year-old Shadi Ali Muttlak Najmi in the
Ein Beit Ilma refugee camp, the sources said.
The
activist was killed in a March attack on a hotel in the Israeli coastal
resort of Netanya which left two Israelis dead and 50 injured.
Israel
has a systematic policy of destroying the homes of Palestinian fighters
in an effort to deter future attacks. It has already destroyed dozens of
homes, a policy slammed by rights groups as collective punishment.
The
army also said it had arrested nine wanted Palestinians in overnight
operations in the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Hebron, as well as in
Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
In
another development, Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot
quoted General Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli army chief saying that the two
Palestinian “terrorists” who killed at least 13 in a bombing on
Monday, October 21, took advantage of the lifting of a curfew on the
West Bank town of Jenin to infiltrate Israel.
“The
terrorists took advantage of the lifting of the curfew in Jenin to carry
out the attack at the Karkur junction” in northern Israel, General
Yaalon told the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and defense
committee Tuesday.
The
explosive-laden car that crashed into a bus was driven by two
Palestinian fighters from Jenin identified as Ashraf al-Asmar and
Mohammed Hassanein, both 18.
The
bombing was claimed by the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the
resistance group Islamic Jihad.
