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| Middle East |
| IDF taking Nablus casbah apart... |
| 2002-08-03 |
| Israeli troops hunted down militants in Nablus, a day after soldiers poured into the northern West Bank city that Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer has dubbed a "terrorist capital". Tanks flanked the rim of Nablus's old quarter, known as the Casbah, while soldiers conducted house-to-house searches for Palestinian militants, witnesses said, adding that snipers stood with guns poised on rooftops. Around 120 tanks, bulldozers and troop carriers swooped on the city Friday after back-to-back bomb attacks in Jerusalem this past week, including a blast at the Hebrew University that killed two Israelis and five Americans and raised the ire of the international community. About 50 people have been detained since Israeli troops stormed in and 10 homes have had walls bulldozed by the army as it cleared pathways into the maze of the Casbah, witnesses said. That's the same number they said they'd detained yesterday. Guess they've been busy with the real estate operations... The Jerusalem campus bombing was thought to have been planned out of Nablus, Israeli officials said. "Nablus is the terrorist capital, the departure point for suicide bombers and other would-be attackers of Israel," said Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer. We'd started to notice that, too. But Jenin is just as bad... Two Palestinians were killed Friday in exchanges of fire as Israeli armour sped into the old town, while a Hamas militant was slain in a raid on a nearby village. The army reimposed a strict curfew in Nablus, which residents had been largely ignoring in recent days. Guess the IDF isn't going to let them ignore it now. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |