NABLUS,
September 15 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Ten Palestinians,
including a child, were killed and ten others wounded Wednesday,
September 15, in two Israeli sweeps into the West Bank.
Five
Palestinians, four of them are members of the Fatah armed wing of
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the other from the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, were killed in Nablus when an Israeli
helicopter strafed a house in the Old City, according to Palestinian
eyewitnesses.
An
11-year-old girl was also killed in the attack.
“She
was watching the ambulances taking away the bodies when soldiers posted
on the roof of a house shot at her, hitting her in the face,” the
girl's grandmother, Mouyassar Al-Nahleh, told Agence France Presse
(AFP).
The
Israeli military source claimed the Israeli forces were conducting a
military raid in the area when they were fired on.
Israel
has imposed a general closure on the Palestinian territories for the
start of the Jewish new year holiday, which was to begin at sundown
Wednesday.
More
Casualties
In
another development, four Palestinians were killed in the West Bank city
of Jenin when an Israeli special force invaded the city.
According
to an Israeli military source, the four Palestinians, belonged to
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, were gunned down in an Israeli thrust into a
garage in the industrial zone, north of Jenin.
The
source added that other two Palestinians were detained during the raid.
Condemnation
 |
|
Arresting
a Palestinian woman (AFP)
|
The
Palestinian Authority, for its part, condemned the Israeli raid on
Nablus and Jenin, warning that such brutal Israeli practices would only
lead to more violence in the region.
Palestinian
Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei said the “Israeli assassinations in Nablus
and Jenin are crimes meant to kill off any Arab or foreign attempts to
contain the tense situation.”
“We
condemn these assassinations perpetrated today in Nablus and Jenin.
These crimes and this Israeli policy of escalation will have serious and
destructive consequences,” Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's aide
Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.
The
Israeli army has recently staged a set of bloody incursions into the
Palestinian cities.
On
Monday, three Palestinians, including Mahmoud Khalifa, a senior member
of Al-Aqsa Brigades, were killed in an Israeli raid on the West Bank
city of Jenin.
The
Israeli occupation forces had also killed 14
Palestinians in an air strike on a football pitch
in eastern Gaza early Tuesday, September 7.
The
latest deaths brought the overall toll since the September 2000 start of
the Palestinian Intifada against Israeli occupation forces to 4,317,
including 3,303 Palestinians and 943 Israelis, according to an AFP
count.
The
Israeli invasions of Palestinian areas are creating a furor among
ordinary Palestinians, who feel distraught over massive scenes of
destruction a usually high toll of casualties afflicted by the sweeping
soldiers.
They
also trigger continued vows of resistance to Israel’s long-standing
occupation of Palestinian areas, where thousands of Jews live as
settlers, and continued aggressions.
