Israel kills 10 Palestinians in Nablus

9/15/2004 10:23:00 PM GMT

Israel has raided the West Bank town of Nablus on Wednesday, killing 10 Palestinians, witnesses said.

Witnesses said six of the dead men were members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, A Palestinian resistance group inside President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. Medics could not immediately reach the site to identify the bodies.

Fierce battles erupted when Israeli soldiers surrounded a building in the old part of the town, Palestinians sources said.

Nablus resident Basma Masri said her son was one of the resistance fighters in the building during the shout out.

She said she had spoken to her son, who told her that he and five others had run out of ammunition.

An Israel army spokeswoman claim that the Israel troops were on operations in Nablus and they were first fired on, and then fired back.

Israel has recently launched a set of violent incursions in the West Bank. On Monday, an Israeli air strike killed three al-Aqsa men in Jenin.

On Monday, Mahmoud Khalifa, a senior member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed in Jenin together with two other Palestinians.

Palestinians want the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, for a state.

Israel captures three UK Muslim women

Israel has arrested three British Muslim women and ordered them to leave the country, their lawyers said.

The three Muslim women said that they were on a visit to the Middle East to support a legitimate charity working with Palestinian children in the occupied territories.

They said the Israeli authorities didn’t tell them why are they being arrested, they said that they were targeted merely because they are Muslims.

The three women, in their 20’s, were arrested in a raid on their hotel in Israel.

They have all now been released, and it is understood they face no charges.

British consular officials have contacted them and said they were fine. The Foreign Office is investigating the case with the Israeli authorities, but it is not clear yet why the three were arrested, as they have faced no charges.