San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
ISRAELI ARMY BESIEGES HOMES OF FUGITIVES IN RAID
Houses were allegedly being used as hideouts for Palestinian attackers
The Israeli army raided a refugee camp near the Palestinian city of Jericho on Saturday, besieging houses it said were being used as hideouts for Palestinian attackers and shooting at residents who opened fire.
The fighting wounded six Palestinians, two seriously, said the Palestinian Health Ministry, and jolted a generally quiet oasis town that has seen less violence than other West Bank cities.
The army said it entered the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp southwest of Jericho in the occupied West Bank to search for suspects involved in a shooting attack last week at a nearby Israeli settlement.
On Jan. 28, with the West Bank on edge after the deadliest Israeli military raid in two decades and two subsequent Palestinian attacks in east Jerusalem that killed seven people, the army said a Palestinian gunman had opened fire in a restaurant at a settlement near Jericho. After firing one bullet, the gunman fled the scene, the army said. No one was wounded.
The army said several Palestinians had holed up in their homes after the shooting with the help of family and were planning future attacks.
To force the fugitives to surrender, a military bulldozer clawed at the walls of one of the homes as an Israeli commander shouted threats over a loudspeaker.
The suspects and family members trickled out of one of the homes and turned themselves in, the military said. Security forces had leveled much of the house, leaving a pile of rubble and twisted metal. Palestinian protesters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at military jeeps as they rumbled down the camp streets, while some gunmen opened fire. The Israeli military fired back, wounding six, none critically, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The incursion comes as violence rises in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank under Israel’s new far-right government, which has taken a combative stance against the Palestinians.
In the latest bloodshed, the Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian on Friday at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military said the man, identified by Palestinians as Abdullah Qalalweh, 25, approached troops at Hawara checkpoint near the city of Nablus, refusing orders to stop. The military said soldiers fired warning shots into the air before a soldier shot the man and killed him.
The latest shooting brings to 36 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops this year.