Palestinians clash with Israeli troops after raid in Jenin
A Palestinian man reads the Quran outside a mosque in the West Bank city of Jenin on the first day of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan on July 20, 2012.
Some 500 Palestinians clashed with Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Jenin today, after Israeli forces broke into an apartment to arrest a member of the militant Islamic Jihad group, the Associated Press reported.
The suspect was not there, and residents angry at the Israeli action threw rocks and petrol bombs at the Israeli troops, the AP reported. The troops fired warning shots, and tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated steel pellets at the protesters as they left Jenin.
An older Palestinian woman was bitten by an Israeli military dog during the protest, Reuters reported.
The Israelis arrested one Palestinian, but it wasn’t the suspect they had been pursuing, Reuters reported.
The raid was the second time this week that Israeli forces had entered the Jenin area to make an arrest, according to Reuters.
On Tuesday, several dozen Palestinians were hurt while protesting an Israeli raid in Tamoun, in which forces detained an Islamic Jihad member.
According to Reuters:
Jenin is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank under interim peace accords with Israel.
Adnan Damiri, a spokesman for the Palestinian security forces, told the AP that Israeli troops have been entering Palestinian-run areas without coordinating with Palestinian officials since November. "There has been an escalation in Israeli raids into our territories since the UN bid (for Palestinian statehood)," he said.
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