Israeli tanks destroyed a Palestinian police building in Rafah city in the Gaza Strip early Saturday, during an incursion into the city by a number of occupation troops, Palestinian officials said.
They told the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, that Israeli tanks and armored vehicles entered as deep as 500 meters into PA territory, destroying the police building.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.
The incursion is the second in the Gaza Strip in less than 24 hours, said WAFA, adding that Israeli tanks went as deep as one kilometer in Deir El Balah area.
On Friday, 12 Palestinians were injured by Israeli forces in clashes, medical sources and witnesses said, while two Jewish settlers, one of them a child, were slightly wounded by a Palestinian mortar bomb in the southern Gaza Strip, the army said, cited by AFP.
Nine Palestinian youths were injured, one of them seriously, when Israeli troops opened fire with live ammunition on a small crowd throwing stones at them near the Mintar (Karni) crossing point on the eastern edge of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources told the agency.
Three other Palestinians, a woman and two men, were also wounded near Jenin in the northern West Bank when Israeli troops, who had come under a hail of stones on entering the village, responded with automatic rifle fire, witnesses said.
In the Gaza Strip, a six-year-old Jewish child and an adult were hurt by mortar bombs near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom the army said.
But the Jerusalem Post said the mortar shells at Kfar Darom in Gush Katif lightly wounded a man and two boys.
They were wounded by shell fragments when one of the shells landed near a playground, it said.
Palestinian security officials said, meanwhile, that Israeli tanks had opened fire from the settlement at the nearby Palestinian town of Deir Al Balah, but no injuries were reported.
In the West Bank, Palestinian officials said an Israel tank had also blown up a Palestinian car on a bypass used by Jewish settlers and the army near Nablus.
Palestinians threw petrol bombs at a border police checkpoint in the tinderbox town of Hebron, also in the West Bank, without causing any injuries, the army said.
Two Palestinians were wounded in overnight shootings in Hebron, Palestinian security sources said.
An Israeli tank had fired several shells at a checkpoint near Hebron set up by Yasser Arafat's elite guard, known as Force 17, though no one was hurt in the incident, Palestinian officials said.
The army said Palestinians opened fire on its forces in two other incidents, targeting a checkpoint at the Ayosh junction at the entrance to Ramallah and shooting at an army vehicle south of Hebron.
Meanwhile, a security guard at the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station averted a massive explosion there Friday afternoon when he spotted a young Palestinian woman carrying a suspicious package that turned out to contain over four kilograms of explosives wrapped in nails. Bomb squad sappers safely detonated the device, according to the Jerusalem Post.
The woman, 23, a resident of Nablus, had refused to open the package when challenged and struggled with the guard, throwing the package to the ground and attempting to flee. While trying to run away, she was struck a glancing blow by a passing car, but continued to run until she was overtaken by police and arrested, according to the report, which added that the woman had been accompanied by a man, who managed to escape. The bomb had been hidden in a large box of laundry detergent.
A Palestinian attack with gas balloons targeting Israeli troops failed Friday morning near Tul Karm in the West Bank, according to Haaretz.
Two tires were set alight at the junction. A border guards patrol crew arrived to extinguish the tires and discovered gas balloons inside them. One of the balloons exploded, but no one was injured. Sappers were summoned to detonate the second gas balloon, said the report – Albawaba.com
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