Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians, at least five of them militants, over the weekend in the most serious flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence in months. The deaths drew a threat on Sunday from a spokesman for Hamas, the Islamist group that heads the Palestinian coalition government, to strike back through “all means of resistance”.In a raid on Sunday, Israeli troops surrounded a house in Nablus in the occupied West Bank and shot dead two members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in a gun battle, local residents said. An Israeli military source confirmed that troops killed the two men saying both were wanted for their involvement in planning attacks that included attempted suicide bombings in Israel.
Several hours later, Israeli forces killed a 17-year-old Palestinian near the West Bank city of Ramallah, residents said. An Israeli military spokesman said the Israeli force had been confronted by a crowd of dozens of Palestinians, some of who were holding petrol bombs and others, knives. “They spotted a man about to throw a petrol bomb, fired at him and saw that he was hit,” the spokesman added.
Israeli forces also killed six Palestinians three armed militants, a policeman, a 17-year-old girl near the West Bank city of Jenin and a civilian motorist with Islamic Jihad gunmen in Gaza, residents and medical officials said. The girl, Huda barghish was killed as 25 army jeeps rolled into the centre of JeninÂ’s refugee camp. The civilian, 45, was killed in an air strike, only the second in Gaza since a November truce, which the Israeli military said targeted militants who had fired makeshift rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot.
“A house in Sderot sustained a direct hit from a Qassam rocket. Two people were taken to hospital with light wounds,” a spokesman for the Magen David Adom rescue services told AFP. Four other people were also treated for shock at the site.
According to an Israeli army spokesman, Palestinian militants fired three projectiles. The aircraft “fired at a vehicle carrying the rocket launching cell shortly after they had fired rockets at the town of Sderot”, he said. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokeswoman Miri Eisin said, “Israel expects the Palestinian leadership to entirely stop rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.” Militants in the Gaza Strip regularly fire rockets against Israel, despite a ceasefire agreement between Palestinian groups and the Jewish state.
The latest deaths brought the overall total to 5,666 since the eruption of the current Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.