Overnight violence injures 3 in West Bank

Two Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were injured when Israeli forces raided Palestinian cities in the West Bank before dawn on Thursday, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.

A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Palestinian youths in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank hurled explosive devices at Israeli soldiers who came to arrest a suspect.

A soldier with medium-to-light injuries was evacuated to a hospital in Haifa, a spokesman for the hospital said.

In the city of Nablus, south of Jenin, clashes broke out between Israeli forces and local youths, after Israeli troops raided the city after midnight, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets into the crowd, injuring two and arresting three others, Wafa reported.

In Hebron, a flashpoint city in the southern West Bank, Israeli soldiers broke into a warehouse and seized eight weapons manufacturing machines, according to the IDF spokesman.

The overnight raid was carried out "as part of the ongoing efforts against illegal weapons manufacturing and trafficking (in the West Bank)," said the spokesman.

Military forces also raided a village in Ramallah, breaking into the family home of a Palestinian responsible for a shooting attack on Wednesday night, according to the military.

A military statement said the man opened fired at Israeli soldiers from a passing car. The soldiers fired back and injured him.

On Wednesday evening, soldiers shot dead a Palestinian outside a Jewish settlement southeast of Ramallah, after the man allegedly carried out a car-ramming attack, the military said.

The violence followed a large overnight raid between Tuesday and Wednesday, during which 34 Palestinians were arrested, including two boys, aged 12 and 17, Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.

The incidents were part of more than a year of violence in the West Bank and Israel, which have claimed the lives of at least 248 Palestinians, 40 Israelis, two U.S. nationals, a Jordanian tourist, an Eritrean and a Sudanese refugee.

Israeli leaders accuse the Palestinian National Authority of "inciting" the unrest, while the Palestinians say it is the result of nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, home to more than 5 million Palestinians, where they wish to establish their independent state.

source: Xinhua