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Israeli Forces Kill Five Palestinians, One Israeli Arab
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Israeli soldiers look at the body of one of two Palestinians they gunned down near a military post in the West Bank
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NABLUS,
West Bank, February 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Israeli
occupation forces on Thursday, February 6, killed five Palestinians,
including two male nurses who were gunned down by an Israeli
helicopter outside a Gaza City hospital, and an unarmed Israeli Arab,
officials said.
Two
of the Palestinians were resistance fighters shot dead after ambushing
Israeli troops at a position on the southern outskirts of Nablus, a
northern city which like most of the West Bank has been reoccupied by
the Israeli occupation army since last June, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
The
ambush and subsequent firefight left two Israelis, Lieutenant Amir
Ben-Aryeh, 21, and Staff Sergeant Idan Suzin, 20, killed and a third
wounded.
A
caller to AFP in Nablus claimed the attack in the name of both the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of the Fatah movement, and
the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The
slain gunmen were identified as Anan Hanani, 19, of the PFLP, and
Ahmed Hamed, 20, of the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades.
Even
Nurses Are Not Safe From Israeli Army Fire
Hours
earlier, an Israeli helicopter gunship rained down heavy machine-gun
fire on a hospital compound in eastern Gaza City, killing two male
nurses as they ran outside to see what was happening and calm their
terrified patients, a hospital statement said.
They
said Omar Hassan, 26, and Abed al-Karim Loubed, 41, were killed in the
compound surrounding al-Wafaa hospital for the elderly where they both
worked in the al-Shajiyeh district.
Several
bullets also penetrated the hospital building, but no one else was
wounded, reported said.
The
Israeli occupation army was investigating the killings, while military
sources admitted choppers had opened fire on "open spaces"
during Gaza operations.
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Palestinian
nurses carry the bodies of their colleagues who were killed by an Israeli
helicopter gunship outside al-Wafaa hospital |
Later
Thursday, an Arab man was shot dead by Israeli security forces after
allegedly attacking an Israeli border policeman near Umm El-Fahm, an
Israeli Arab town just outside the West Bank, Israeli police spokesman
Gil Kleiman told AFP.
Police
claimed the man was a "suspected Palestinian terrorist," but
later admitted that he had no identity papers on him.
Kleiman
alleged the slain man, who could have been a Palestinian or an Arab
Israeli, went for the border policeman with a "big knife,"
upon which another policeman opened fire, killing the attacker but
also wounding his colleague.
Refuting
the Israeli police allegation, Arab Israeli residents and witnesses of
Umm El Fahm said the man was known to have mental problems and denied
that he was armed.
The
slain man was found not to have any explosives or firearms on him.
Shortly
after, an unarmed Palestinian man working illegally in Israel was shot
dead by an Israeli patrol while trying to cross back into the West
Bank, close to the town of Tulkarem, Israeli and Palestinian sources
said.
His
death raised to 2,929 the number of people killed since the start of
the Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli occupation more than 28
months ago, including 2,184 Palestinians and 689 Israelis.
Israeli
Troops Beat French MSF Worker
Meanwhile,
a French national working with the French aid group Medecins Sans
Frontieres (Doctors without Borders- MSF) was beaten up by three
Israeli occupation soldiers Wednesday, February 5, at a checkpoint in
the southern Gaza Strip, the group’s security officer told AFP.
For
its part, the Israeli army said the man was a known troublemaker who
attempted to cross a checkpoint in direct defiance of military orders
and had to be restrained.
The
incident occurred Wednesday morning when a group of four MSF workers,
including a field coordinator, a doctor, a translator and their
driver, tried to enter the Al-Mawasi coastal district near Khan Yunis,
MSF security officer Massimiliano Cosci said.
Soldiers
at a checkpoint refused them entry, so the field coordinator got out
of their vehicle and walked towards a second group of soldiers on the
far side of the checkpoint to find out why they were not allowed to
pass, Cosci said.
The
field worker was wearing a clearly-marked MSF jacket and carrying the
group’s distinctive flag in his hand as he approached three
soldiers.
But
when he reached them, they grabbed him by the shoulders and punched
him in the back and face, Cosci said, saying the field worker was not
allowed to even make a phone call until a more senior Israeli officer
arrived at the scene.
However,
an army spokesman said the group turned up at the checkpoint, knowing
they had been refused a permit to cross and that one of them tried to
defy the soldiers and cross anyway.
“The
head of the group turned up and tried to cross the checkpoint against
the orders of the soldiers, so they chased after him,” he said.
“He tried to attack them but they managed to control him.
“This
is not the first time he has bluntly ignored army orders,” the
spokesman said, adding the man had leveled similar “disturbing
statements” against the army in the past.
But
MSF’s Cosci, who filed a complaint with the army, said the incident
was “very unusual.
“It’s
quite common that we are prevented from entering this area, but this
has never happened before - that someone who approaches a group of
soldiers carrying an MSF flag in their hand is beaten up,” he said.
Mawasi
is a Palestinian community located on the Mediterranean coastline
surrounded by the Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Khatif, home to the
largest number of settlers in the Gaza Strip
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