| Palestinian Youth killed during IDF arrest raid in Nablus
By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press
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The Nablus operation involved hundreds of troops
An 18-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israel Defense Forces gunfire in the center of the West Bank city of Nablus on the second day of a search for fugitives and bomb labs.
The youth was shot on a rooftop, as he held a gas canister above his head, the army said. Soldiers fired because they feared he'd drop the canister on them, the army said.
However, Palestinian medics and security sources said Sukha had been standing on the roof of a mosque and had thrown rocks at soldiers below, who then shot him in the stomach and shoulder.
As part of the large-scale operation, troops broke down shop doors with sledge hammers and enforced a curfew. Soldiers took over 16 buildings in Nablus' old city, or Casbah, home to about 20,000 residents and a stronghold of militants. Families in the buildings commandeered by troops were confined to one room per apartment, witnesses said.
The IDF said Operation Full Court Press, the largest in over a year, would last several days. The raid was triggered in part by the arrest earlier in the week of an 18-year-old city resident who was recruited by Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to blow himself up in Jerusalem. The youth was caught at an Israeli checkpoint, and soldiers later found his explosives hidden in a school bag.
On Thursday, soldiers handed out leaflets explaining that they are looking for seven men, most from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group with ties to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
"Help us catch them because they are the ones who are causing damage to Nablus," read the leaflet distributed around the neighborhood.
The large IDF force is also targeting the area's Tanzim infrastructure, which the IDF says is responsible for 80 percent of the planned terror attacks in the West Bank.
Troops discovered an explosives belt weighing 20 kilograms in an apartment and a roadside bomb at a junction, the army said.
The Nablus leader of Al-Aqsa, Nayef Abu Sharikh, was among those on the wanted list. His mother, Dahieh, said soldiers burst into her home looking for her son.
"They were shouting, cursing," she said. "They damaged closets, threw all the things inside on the floor."
Before dawn Friday, security forces arrested five Palestinian suspects in the West Bank, according to the radio.
Also overnight, IDF troops demolished the house of an Islamic Jihad leader, Bassam Abu Aker, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Israel Radio reported. The army said Abu Aker had planned terror attacks, including an attack in Jerusalem about three years ago that wounded five people, and had been involved in shooting at the south Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.
In recent weeks, troops have rounded up several Nablus teens who told interrogators they had been recruited as suicide bombers by militants in the casbah marketplace. | |
