Since August Israel has blown up more than 100 houses in the West Bank.

NABLUS, West Bank, January 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli occupation soldiers shot dead a Palestinian early Wednesday, January 8, in the village of Saida, near Tulkarem, in the north of the West Bank, Palestinian witnesses said.

They said Ahmad Ajaj, 18, was on the roof of a building near a house which the soldiers were in the process of demolishing when one of the Israelis opened fire on him, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Earlier another Palestinian was shot dead in the south of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources said.

Aiman Ahnadok, 30, was shot in the head in Khan Yunis, only a few hundred meters (yards) from the Neve Dekalim Jewish settlement, AFP said.

The latest deaths took to 2,842 the number of victims in the 27-month intifada or Palestinian uprising, the overwhelming majority of them Palestinians.

Meanwhile, in the northern part of Tulkarem in the West Bank, the Israeli army early Wednesday blew up the home of a Palestinian activist, his family said.

It was the home of Mohammed Al Aqsar, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah resistance movement.

The house belonged to the activist’s father Osama Al Aqsar and was in the village of Saida where he is mayor.

Since August, Israel has blown up more than 100 houses in the West Bank in what it says is a bid to dissuade resistance fighters. The policy has been strongly criticized by human rights groups who see it as collective punishment.

“See This Sound Bomb?”

On Tuesday, January 7, Israeli occupation troops stopped two taxis near the West Bank town of Ramallah, forcing the passengers out and throwing a percussion grenade at them and a tear-gas grenade into one vehicle, an AFP reporter at the scene said.

The soldiers in an armored personnel carrier (APC), stopped a communal taxi carrying around 10 passengers and forced them out.

When an AFP reporter traveling in the taxi told one of the soldiers in English he was a journalist, the soldier held up a sound bomb and said: “I don’t care. See this sound bomb? The pin is pulled and I just have to take my finger off.”

Then another soldier stopped a second taxi, which was not carrying passengers, and threw a tear-gas grenade inside after forcing the driver out.

After making the crowd wait half an hour longer, the first soldier threw the sound bomb at them and the troops sped away in their armored vehicle, the journalist said, adding that the crowd fled but no one was hurt.

The incident took place on a dirt track near the illegal Jewish settlement of Beit El used as alternative road by Palestinians prevented from traveling freely on the main roads.

On December 3, a 95-year-old Palestinian woman was killed when Israeli troops fired on her car in the same area.