GAZA (Islamweb & News Agencies) - At least 5 Palestinians were murdered in the latest outburst of on-going Israeli brutality against a Palestinian intifadha, uprising , against Israeli occupation. A Palestinian activist and his two young children were killed when their house in the southern Gaza Strip was targeted by Israeli assassins.
Another Palestinian was shot dead late Sunday at the West Bank town of Nablus during Israeli Brutal response to Palestinian intifadha against Israeli occupation. Falah Zidan, 30, was hit by a bullet on the edge of the Balata refugee camp, situated in Nablus in the north of the West Bank. Details about the fifth victim of on-going Israeli brutality are not immediately available. In Gaza, Palestinian security officials said two Israeli missiles slammed into Samir Abu Zeid's home in Rafah near the Egyptian border, killing him, his seven-year-old daughter and six-year-old son in Israel's fourth military strike on the strip in less than 36 hours.
An official from the Palestinian Popular Resistance Movement (PRM) identified Abu Zeid as a senior activist in the PRM, a group of former members of Palestinian factions, and said the explosion another Israeli assassination.
He said Abu Zeid had been active in the 11-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that erupted in September amidst failed peace talks. Israel has so far assassinated some 60 leaders of the uprising.
A doctor at the hospital in Rafah where the three bodies were taken said they had been torn to pieces and badly burned. He said at least two people had been wounded in the attack.
More than a dozen Palestinian witnesses said they saw a missile launched from Israeli territory.
The new deaths brought to at least 525 the number of Palestinians killed in the fighting.
HEBRON RESISTANCE MEN FACE ISRAELI ARMOURED VEHICLES
Meanwhile, Palestinian Resistance men stood up to Israeli occupation troops in armored vehicles that penetrated the Palestinian-ruled town of Hebron in the West Bank, a Palestinian security official said.
The Palestinian security official said an Israeli tank and an armored personnel carrier thrust some 700 meters into a Palestinian area to shell a house and a petrol station while Palestinian Resistance men responded to the soldiers' rifle fire.
Palestinian hospital sources said three people were wounded.
A Reuters reporter on the scene said a Palestinian checkpoint was dismantled by the occupation soldiers and a nearby home set alight by Israeli flares before the troops withdrew.In other West Bank intifadha confrontations, Palestinian Resistance men responded to gunfire from Israeli soldiers of occupation at the Israeli army base of Dotan south of the town of Jenin, Palestinian security sources said. They said the soldiers shot at a Palestinian checkpoint but hurt no one.
On Sunday Israeli soldiers shot dead an unarmed Palestinian, Mu'in Abu Lawyeh, 38, who had been shopping for school books for his children when he tried to evade a West Bank checkpoint, Palestinian hospital officials said.(Read photo caption below)
BLOCKADE, PEACE TALKS SUBJECT TO INTIFADHA CONFRONTATIONS
Israeli occupation forces have imposed a crippling blockade on the West Bank and Gaza since the start of the uprising, citing security concerns. Palestinians call the measures collective punishment.
``The Israeli government has turned the West Bank and Gaza into the biggest prison on earth,'' Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told Reuters Television.
The bloodshed overshadowed a push by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for talks on implementing a U.S.-brokered truce. Peres said on Saturday that Israeli officials were ''conducting conversations'' with Palestinian counterparts on the truce, accepted by both sides in June but otherwise unheeded.
But senior Palestinian officials dismissed the remarks as a publicity stunt.
Sharon has refused to resume peace negotiations with the Palestinians before a complete halt to the intifadha, but gave Peres a mandate last week to hold talks on establishing a cease-fire.
A Palestinian official said Peres had been in contact with a high-level official in the Palestinian Authority and Arafat had passed on a message through foreign envoys that he was prepared to meet Peres ``whenever he wants.''
PHOTO CAPTION:
A Palestinian protester carries the blood-stained shirt of Mu'in Abu Laweh who was shot dead near the West Bank city of Nablus August 19, 2001. Israeli soldiers opened fire at a crowd of Palestinians trying to cross an Israeli road barrier near Nablus killing one man and wounding five others according to hospital officials. (Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters)