Two Palestinians, one of them a local Islamic Jihad leader, have been killed in an Israeli arrest raid in the West Bank village of Qabatiya. Mraweh Kamil, Islamic Jihad's leader from the nearby town of Jenin, died in a gunfight after Israeli troops sealed off the house he was hiding in. A member of the Palestinian security forces was also gunned down. | I love a little good news with my morning coffee. |
In a separate incident, Hamas militants claimed responsibility for a rocket attack that damaged a house in the Israeli city of Sderot near the Gaza Strip. No-one was injured in the attack. Hamas said it acted in retaliation for a visit by Jews on Monday to the Jerusalem site home to the biblical Jewish Temples and to the al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine. The Israeli army entered Qabatiya in the middle of the night, looking for an Islamic Jihad fugitive. Soldiers encircled the house where Mraweh Kamil took refuge and there was a gunbattle which grew fiercer as local fighters came to his aid. Kamil and the Palestinian security officer were killed. Eventually, an army bulldozer flattened the house.
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Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to go after members of Islamic Jihad, saying there is an active cell in the northern West Bank planning bomb attacks, the BBC's Barbara Plett in Jerusalem says. Palestinian officials say the raids are much wider and that more than 500 men from different factions have been arrested since the truce was agreed. They say this endangers the ceasefire because the wanted men feel they have no protection.