Israel conducts mass arrest campaign
Israeli occupation forces have detained more than 20 Palestinians in an overnight raid across the West Bank.
Aljazeera’s correspondent reports that Israeli troops, backed by 50 military vehicles, raided Jenin and detained Palestinians who they say are on Israel’s “most-wanted” list.
Ten members of Islamic Jihad, the resistance group that said it carried out the bombing in Israel last week, were arrested in Qabatya, where two fellow Jihad activists were shot dead by Israeli forces late on Sunday.
Islamic Jihad’s bombing in Hadera was in response to the earlier assassination by Israel of an Islamic Jihad leader.
On Tuesday, fierce clashes erupted in the town between Palestinian fighters and Israeli troops, according to the correspondent.
Another three Islamic Jihad members were detained for questioning in the nearby northern West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus, while eight members from the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, were arrested in the Bethlehem area.
Two other wanted activists, whose affiliation was not immediately clear, were also arrested in Ram Allah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, in the central West Bank, Israeli military sources said.
The arrests come as part of an ongoing military onslaught by Israel on the occupied Palestinian territories that has seen a number of Palestinians wounded and the infrastructure, including roads and water supplies, damaged.