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A relative mourns after identifying the bodies of brothers Khalid and Adel Deeb, who were killed by an Israeli tank shell in Gaza.
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Additional
reporting by IOL Palestine Bureau
GAZA
CITY, September 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli
occupation tanks and helicopters killed nine Palestinians during an
overnight raid on Gaza City, Palestinian hospital sources said early
Tuesday, September 24.
The
Israeli army made three separate overnight incursions into autonomous
Palestinian areas of the Gaza Strip while keeping up its siege on the
West Bank headquarters of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Arafat
on Monday, September 23, rejected Israel’s terms for lifting its siege
of his battered offices in Ramallah as Washington and the world
community stepped up pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Sharon
not only maintained his forces around Arafat’s offices, having
destroyed the other buildings in the compound, but announced that he
intended to hit Palestinian organizations based in the Gaza Strip,
Israeli public television reported.
“We
have not achieved our mission in the Gaza Strip. The day will come when
we will have to hit Hamas and the Islamic Jihad,” he said during a
ceremony in Jerusalem.
Within
hours, Israeli forces had launched a deadly raid on the Shejaya
neighborhood of Gaza City.
Three
of the Palestinian victims were killed when tanks and helicopters opened
fire simultaneously on the area. The three were Yassin Nasser, 53, an
activist in the Hamas Islamic movement, Jaber al-Kharazi, 20, a fighter
of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat’s
mainstream Fatah movement, and Mahmud Kichkom, around the same age.
Six
other Palestinians, one of whom remained unidentified, were killed soon
afterwards by tank-shell fire on a street near their homes, the sources
said.
At
least 20 Palestinians were also injured in the attack, sources said,
with three in critical condition.
Two
explosions were heard during the incursion as Israeli troops dynamited
local metal workshops and another building in Shejaya and the
neighboring Zeitun area before withdrawing, witnesses said.
Israeli
forces made two other overnight incursions into the Gaza Strip,
Palestinian security forces said.
Ten
Israeli tanks accompanied by a bulldozer rolled two kilometers (more
than a mile) into the Beit Lahia area, in the northern Gaza Strip,
without opening fire, the sources said.
Elsewhere,
Israeli armored cars took up positions east of the Jabalya refugee camp,
also in northern Gaza.
In
another development, Palestinian fighters from various resistance
factions succeeded Tuesday morning in destroying four Israeli tanks
during the conflicts in Gaza.
The
Ezzeddine Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic
resistance movement Hamas, announced through loudspeakers its
responsibility of blowing up the four tanks and assured that a number of
Israeli soldiers were also hurt in the explosions.
Meanwhile,
the Palestinian News Agency (WAFA) reported Tuesday, that in the early
morning, Israeli forces abducted tens of residents from Al-Khalil
(Hebron) in the West Bank.
WAFA’s
correspondent said that there are entire families among those abducted
and that they were transferred to unidentified locations.
The
forces have started the abductions late last night and they forcefully
entered houses in the Al-Sheikh and Al-Jobari alleys.
Jewish
settlers in Al-Khalil have also attacked several Palestinian residents
an attacked their homes. The attacks, which were carried out under the
protection of the Israeli army, were concentrated in the old village and
it's surrounding areas, reported WAFA.
