Israel troops fired two anti-tank missiles at a Palestinian police station near Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip Wednesday, destroying the building and wounding seven policemen, Palestinian and Israeli officials told AFP.
Acceding to Haaretz, a Palestinian police spokesman said at least six people were wounded in the attack. Israel Radio reported that two of the injured were in serious condition.
The policemen's injuries ranged from critical to slight, Palestinian officials told the agency. They said the attack came without warning or provocation.
But an army spokesman said the missile strike was in response to a Palestinian mortar bomb which landed close to a military base in the Gaza Strip.
"This response came after repeated demands to the Palestinian security forces to stop the shooting," the spokesman said.
In a separate incident near the Jewish settlement of Mevo Dothan, south of the town of Jenin in the West Bank, two Israelis were slightly wounded when their vehicle came under fire from Palestinian gunmen, an army spokesman said.
One of the casualties was evacuated to an Israeli hospital, he added.
Meanwhile, a bomb exploded near an Israeli army base also near Jenin, with no injuries reported.
The missile attack was the third such strike in a week on Palestinian security positions in the area.
Earlier, four Palestinians were killed by an elite Israeli army unit near Nablus, and their bodies mutilated with axes, said Al Jazeera satellite channel.
Israel said the four were planting a road-side bomb in the area, but the governor of Palestinian-ruled Nablus, Mahmoud Aloul, said three Palestinian civilians were killed when they tried to rescue a gunman who was shot and wounded in the gunfire echange with Israeli army troops near the West Bank city.
"When three other Palestinians...came to pick up the injured gunman, they were shot at and killed immediately," Aloul said.
A Palestinian security source said three bodies were found at dawn in an olive grove near the village of Beit Iba and that a fourth body, apparently that of the gunman they tried to rescue, was in the hands of the Israeli army.
Three of the bullet-riddled victims were later identified as Hakkam Tayeh, 22, Faadi Samaana, 25, and Zaher Ismail, 30, while the fourth body, that of Ahmed Fares, 23, was taken away by the Israelis.
Thousands of Palestinians participated in their funerals Wednesday afternoon.
Israel Radio reported that one of those killed was Maher Faras, a Fatah activist, from the Balata refugee camp next to the Palestinian-controlled West Bank city.
According to a slightly different account of events from Haaretz, an Israeli army commander in the Nablus area, Col. Yossi Adiri, said that soldiers from the elite Egoz unit ambushed three Palestinians as they were planting an explosive device on the road leading to Mount Eival northeast of Nablus in the West Bank, killing two of them, and a third escaped. He said that about an hour later three Palestinians returned to the scene, one of whom was armed. The other two Palestinians were apparently killed when the troops shot at the returning Palestinians.
Palestinian sources said that five other Palestinians were wounded in clashes with the Israeli army in the Bitunia area near Ramallah in the West Bank, according to paper.
Palestinian officials say that over 40 political leaders and resistance fighters have been killed under Israel's assassination policy, variously called by the euphemisms "targeted killings," "liquidations," "surgical strikes," and "interception operations."
AFP's latest death tally for the Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 563 Palestinians, and 146 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
Israel’s wounded number in the high hundreds, according to army sources, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society puts the number of Palestinians injured at over 14,000.
Amnesty International reported early this year that almost 100 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli soldiers, nearly all in situations where the occupation troops were under no immediate threat.
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began last September – Albawaba.com
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