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Remains of Jenin
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JENIN,
West Bank, November 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli troops
killed a Jenin chief of the armed branch of the resistance group Jihad
in a gun battle early Saturday, November 9, according to Palestinian and
Israeli security sources.
Iyad
Swalha, 32, was killed during a battle that lasted an hour after Israeli
occupation soldiers surrounded the house he was in, the Palestinian
sources said, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
An
Israeli statement confirmed Sawalha's death, accusing him of
responsibility for attacks on buses that claimed the lives of 31 people
and were claimed by the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the
Palestinian resistance movement.
The
attacks used cars laden with explosives which were blown up alongside
their targets in northern
Israel
, on June 5 and October 21.
Following
the second attack, the Israeli army reoccupied the city and refugee camp
of Jenin, failing to find Sawalha but abducting 165 Palestinians.
They
finally tracked him down on Saturday, holed up in a house in Jenin with
his wife, and called on him to surrender, the Israeli statement claimed.
He
replied with grenades and gunfire, until the troops stormed the house,
finding his body inside, it alleged.
Sawalha's
mother and sister were detained Friday, November 8, by the Shin Bet
security services when several Israeli jeeps arrived at the family's
home in the West Bank village of Ra'i, near Jenin, and arrested
55-year-old Najayah and 26-year-old Arpeline, according to Israeli daily
Ha’aretz.
Israel
uses terms like “arrest”, “suspected terrorists”, in reference
to its military operations against the Palestinians.
Law
professors, however, say that the Israeli army (having no legal
jurisdiction in areas under full Palestinian control, according to
Oslo
and other agreements) is abducting Palestinians, not arresting them. 
