A Palestinian vendor tries to save some of his fruit after Israeli forces destroyed his stall

GAZA CITY, February 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Two Palestinian male nurses were killed early Thursday, February 6, when an Israeli helicopter gunship opened heavy machinegun fire on a hospital compound in eastern Gaza City, Palestinian medical sources said.

They said Omar Hassan, 26, and Abed Al-Karim Loubed, 41, were killed in the compound surrounding the Al-Wafaa hospital for the elderly where they both worked in the Al-Shajiyeh district in eastern Gaza City, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

When the shooting started, the two men went outside into the courtyard where they were immediately gunned down, dying on the spot, the sources said.

Several bullets also penetrated the hospital building, but no one else was injured.

An Israeli military source acknowledged helicopter gunships had been firing in the area to deter “fighting in the street”.

“As part of the ongoing activity in Gaza, helicopters have been firing into open spaces to deter people from going out into the street to fight, but we have no knowledge of any injuries,” he claimed.

Witnesses said several Israeli occupation tanks moved into an area east of Al-Shajiyeh district, but it was not clear why.

The two deaths raised to 2,923 the number of people killed since the start of the 29-month-old Palestinian uprising, including 2,180 Palestinians and 687 Israelis.

Israeli Troops Beat French MSF Worker

Meanwhile, a French national working with the French aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders- MSF) was beaten up by three Israeli occupation soldiers Wednesday, February 5, at a checkpoint in the southern Gaza Strip, the group’s security officer told AFP.

For its part, the Israeli army said the man was a known troublemaker who attempted to cross a checkpoint in direct defiance of military orders and had to be restrained.

The incident occurred Wednesday morning when a group of four MSF workers, including a field coordinator, a doctor, a translator and their driver, tried to enter the Al-Mawasi coastal district near Khan Yunis, MSF security officer Massimiliano Cosci said.

Soldiers at a checkpoint refused them entry, so the field coordinator got out of their vehicle and walked towards a second group of soldiers on the far side of the checkpoint to find out why they were not allowed to pass, Cosci said.

The field worker was wearing a clearly-marked MSF jacket and carrying the group’s distinctive flag in his hand as he approached three soldiers.

But when he reached them, they grabbed him by the shoulders and punched him in the back and face, Cosci said, saying the field worker was not allowed to even make a phone call until a more senior Israeli officer arrived at the scene.

However, an army spokesman said the group turned up at the checkpoint, knowing they had been refused a permit to cross and that one of them tried to defy the soldiers and cross anyway.

“The head of the group turned up and tried to cross the checkpoint against the orders of the soldiers, so they chased after him,” he said. “He tried to attack them but they managed to control him.

“This is not the first time he has bluntly ignored army orders,” the spokesman said, adding the man had leveled similar “disturbing statements” against the army in the past.

But MSF’s Cosci, who filed a complaint with the army, said the incident was “very unusual.

“It’s quite common that we are prevented from entering this area, but this has never happened before - that someone who approaches a group of soldiers carrying an MSF flag in their hand is beaten up,” he said.

Mawasi is a Palestinian community located on the Mediterranean coastline surrounded by the Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Khatif, home to the largest number of settlers in the Gaza Strip

Two Palestinians, Two Israelis Killed in West Bank

In the West Bank, two armed Palestinian resistance fighters were killed in exchanges of fire with the Israeli army during an attack that killed two Israelis early Thursday just south of the city of Nablus.

The bodies of the Palestinians were being held by the Israeli army, Israeli military sources said without giving further details.

The attack was claimed by two Palestinian resistance groups in a phone call to AFP.

The caller said the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), were responsible for the shooting.

The Israelis were gunned down by resistance fighters in an ambush near Mount Gerizim on the southern outskirts of Nablus, the caller said, without giving further details.

Earlier that day, three Palestinians - a policeman, an elderly woman and a teenager -- were killed by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip and the reoccupied West Bank.

Also in the West Bank town of Al-Khalil (Hebron), Israeli occupation troops destroyed several stalls in a Palestinian market Wednesday.