Roundup: Six Palestinians killed in Israeli raids

Six Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids against the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinian security sources and medics said.

Security sources said that five of the dead were from the northern West Bank city of Jenin, including a teenage girl, three militants and one police officer.

The sixth was a Palestinian bystander killed in an Israeli airstrike on a car in northern Gaza Strip, they added. An early report said the victim was a militant in the car.

Observers expected that the new wave of violence between Israel and the Palestinians would undermine the efforts to expand a fragile Gaza truce reached in last November to the West Bank.

Early on Saturday morning, an Israeli army force backed by armored vehicles stormed into the city of Jenin and shot dead a Palestinian, witnesses said, adding that the victim was a policeman who was not involved in the clashes erupted in the city.

Another three militants were shot dead by Israeli troops who penetrated into Jenin in the evening, the sources said.

Two were members of al-Aqsa Brigades, Fatah movement's armed wing, and the third was a member of al-Quds Brigades, military offshoot of the Islamic Jihad (Holy War).

Later on Saturday night, security sources said that an Israeli army force backed by 25 armored vehicles, raided the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin and shot dead a 17-year-old girl.

The sources said the Israeli army force stormed into the refugee camp to search for wanted Islamic Jihad militants, adding that the girl is the sister of one of the Islamic Jihad militants.

Witnesses said that an Israeli army force stormed into the house of the Islamic Jihad militant, and the girl was shot dead when they fired at the house.

Following the raids on Jenin, Gaza Strip militant groups, who reduced launching homemade rockets from Gaza at Israel in the past few days, vowed to resume their attacks again.

Israeli Radio quoted an Israeli army spokesman as saying that six rockets had been fired from northern Gaza Strip and landed on the southern Israeli town of Sderot, wounding at least six Israelis.

Al-Quds Brigades claimed responsibility for launching the six rockets.

An Israeli Apache attack helicopter fired one missile at a car carrying three Islamic Jihad militants in northern Gaza Strip.

They said the three militants managed to escape from the car, while one Palestinian bystander called Kamal Annan was killed.

An Islamic Jihad spokesman confirmed that none of the three militants had been hurt, saying that a civilian bystander was killed and two others were wounded.

Nafez Azzam, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, accused Israel for not respecting the cease-fire that the Palestinian militant groups had accepted last November, saying that "Israel never stopped its raids on the Palestinians in the West Bank."

"The killings of Palestinian fighters as well as the raids and arrests in the West Bank, would never break the militants' determination to continue with their struggle against the occupation," Azzam said.

Source: Xinhua