Israeli forces were withdrawing Friday afternoon from West Bank city of Jenin and the refugee camp of the same name, Israel Radio reported.
Israeli infantry and tanks swept the Jenin refugee camp earlier Friday in search of Palestinian activists who eluded capture in the Israeli raid last month, Israeli army sources said.
Two Palestinians were injured by tank shells, the Palestinian sources said, while the army said one of its soldiers was lightly wounded.
The Israeli army said that it had arrested 24 Palestinians suspected of being involved in anti-Israeli attacks during the operation. Among those picked up inside the city was Kamal Abu al-Wafa, a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an extremist offshoot of Arafat's Fatah group responsible for many attacks on Israelis, the Palestinian sources and witnesses said.
At the camp, the soldiers threw grenades into the emptied home of an official of the radical Islamic group Hamas and burned it down, witnesses said.
Separately, a Palestinian teen was killed and two others hurt, one seriously, by a mine blast in the flattened Jenin camp, hospital sources said. It was not clear which side planted the booby trap during the pitched battles there last month.
Palestinian sources said that Israeli tanks had briefly entered the West Bank city of Nablus, but withdrew a short while later without making any arrests.
Palestinian sources said that a seven-year-old boy was killed Friday by Israeli gunfire in the Askar refugee camp next to Nablus. The sources said that Amid Abu Sayar was seriously wounded when soldiers in a tank opened fire at a store owned by the boy's father. They also said that eight other Palestinians were injured by the gunfire. (Albawaba.com)
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