|
Bomb Explodes Near Israeli Checkpoint
JERUSALEM, April 15 (News Agencies) - A pipe bomb exploded near an Israeli army checkpoint outside the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya near the border with Israel on Sunday, as scattered violence erupted in the Palestinian territories.
The army said no injuries were reported from the blast, which occurred near the Green Line dividing Israel and the West Bank, a few kilometers (miles) from the Israeli town of Kfar Saba, the scene of twin pipe bomb explosions on Saturday evening that left one person injured.
Military sources said the Qalqilya explosion was also caused by a pipe bomb.
On March 28th, two Jewish teenagers were killed when a bomber blew himself up at a service station near Kfar Saba, one of a spate of attacks that triggered massive strikes by Israel on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
A second bomb exploded near an army convoy near the Jewish settlement of Hermesh southwest of Jenin in the northern West Bank, the army said, adding that Palestinians shot at convoy and the army returned fire.
In the Gaza Strip, shrapnel injured two Palestinians, including a six-year-old girl, when an Israeli tank fired a shell on the Rafah refugee camp near the border with Egypt, the day after the army bombarded nearby Rafah town.
The Israeli army reported four shooting incidents in Rafah and the Neve Dekalim settlement in the southern Gaza Strip during the night following the raid on Rafah that left injured 46 Palestinians and destroyed houses, shops and Palestinian security positions.
Egyptian medical and security sources said a stray Israeli bullet injured a young Egyptian woman in the shoulder late Saturday while she was in her courtyard around 500 meters (550 yards) from the border with the Gaza Strip.
In other incidents, near Bethlehem in the southern West Bank, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on an Israeli army patrol on a road used by Jewish settlers, Palestinian sources and the Israeli army said.
The army said it did not fire back, but Palestinian sources said the army then closed the road and searched nearby Palestinian homes looking for gunmen.
Clashes erupted in the West Bank town of Hebron between dozens of young stone throwing children and soldiers at an Israeli army checkpoint who fired at them with rubber-coated steel bullets, witnesses said.
No one was injured in the confrontation during which the children also burnt tires, they said.
Later in Hebron, the Israeli army said a settlement of Jewish extremists in the heart of the mainly Palestinian town came under fire from the direction of the Arab neighborhood of Abu Sneinah and that the army fired back.
No one was injured in the exchange of fire, the army said.
A little known Palestinian group calling itself the Brigades of the Martyrs of al-Aqsa on Sunday claimed responsibility for one of the two bombings in Kfar Saba.
In a statement issued in Beirut, the group said it was a "riposte to Israeli aggressions against our people in Palestine and south Lebanon."
The group has claimed several minor attacks against Israeli targets since the eruption of the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, in late September.
|
