Three Israeli Soldiers Killed in Gaza

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, September 23 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Three Israeli soldiers were killed Thursday, September 23, in a pre-dawn Palestinian attack on a Jewish settlement in southern Gaza Strip.

Three members of the Jihad movement, Abul Rish Brigades and Popular resistance committee broke into the Israeli Morag settlement in southern Gaza and opened fire at the Israeli soldiers, killing three soldiers and injuring two others, one seriously, Israeli sources told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The three Palestinian fighters were also killed in the attack.

Thursday's attack came less than 24 hours when two Israeli policemen were killed and 16 others injured in occupied Jerusalem.

The attack, claimed by Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, occurred when a Palestinian female teenager, Zainab Abu Salem, 19, from the Askar refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus blew herself up in a busy Jerusalem bus station in retaliation for the daily Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.

An unnamed group member in Nablus said that Zainab volunteered for a bomb attack, saying she wanted to avenge Palestinian resistance activists killed recently in Nablus, according The Associated Press.

“She said that if we refused, she would attack an army post with a knife.”

"So we organized quickly. We set up the attack within 17 hours and we chose this site in Jerusalem because we know it," he added.

The Israeli army, for its part, said the Palestinian operation in occupied Jerusalem, which came two days before the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, the fast of Yom Kippur, had prevented a big Palestinian attack against the Israelis.

“The operation of border police officers today in Jerusalem... prevented a very big attack,” Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco told reporters at the scene of the attack.

Israeli Incursion

In Gaza, some 12 Palestinian civilians were injured early Thursday when Israeli helicopters fired missiles into the Khan Younis refugee camp during an incursion into the city under claims of searching for launching posts of rockets fired by the Palestinian resistance fighters.

Fearing house demolitions, residents in the area fled into the night, some carrying children wrapped in blankets.

Also in the West Bank, five Palestinians were injured when Israeli occupation forces fired rubber bullets to break up a protest against the construction of the self-styled Israeli separation wall.

The Israeli forces also fired teargas to disperse the Palestinian citizens.

Around 1,000 Palestinian people were trying to stop the Israeli bulldozers from leveling a farming land in Beit Awwa, near the West Bank city of Hebron, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

Israel claims the construction of the separation wall is necessary for maintaining its security. But the Palestinians dismiss the allegation as deceptive.

The Palestinians -– backed by the international community and the United Nations -– maintain that the wall is nothing but an Israeli land-grab and a bid to pre-empt the borders of their future state.

The wall has resulted in the confiscation of 11,4000 dunums (2,850 acres - 1,140 hectares) of privately-owned Palestinian land and in the destruction of 102,320 trees, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).