The Palestinian Center For Human Rights, in Gaza, published its weekly report on the Israeli violations in the occupied Palestinian territories for the period between January 18 and 24. Three Palestinians, including one child were killed, 19 including one child were injured and 54 residents including one child were taken prisoner. During the reporting period, soldiers killed 3 Palestinians, including a child, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Also, a child wounded by the army was pronounced clinically dead.
Troops attempted to exempt themselves from responsibility for the child's death, but eyewitnesses asserted that she was hit by a sound bomb fired by the army when she was at school.
One Palestinian resident died of earlier wounds suffered in the Gaza Strip, and another Palestinian was shot and killed by an Israeli guard of a construction site inside Israel; the resident was a construction worker.
In the Gaza Strip, troops shot and killed a Palestinian civilian, wounded and arrested two others, when the three civilians attempted to infiltrate into Israel to search for jobs.
The PCHR reported that one Palestinian child was wounded in Burqa village, west of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, when soldiers fired at a number of children who threw stones at an army military vehicle invading their area.
Seven Palestinian civilians were also wounded when army used excessive force against a peaceful protest organized in Bil'in village, west of Ramallah, in protest to the construction of the Annexation Wall. Israeli and International peace activists also participate in the weekly Bil'in protest against the Wall.
The army carried 22 invasion into Palestinian areas in the occupied West Bank and took prisoner 54 residents, including one child.
Soldiers also transformed a commercial compound in Nablus into a military site during an incursion into the city on Thursday, 18 January 2007 and fired at Palestinians from inside it, the PCHR added.
The center also reported that the army continued to impose a full and strict siege over the occupied Palestinian territories.
Four Palestinian civilians, including three children were taken prisoner at various Israeli military checkpoints installed in the occupied West Bank.
The Gaza Strip remained under strict siege and has suffered shortages in fuels and basic goods.
The construction of the Annexation Wall in the West Bank have continued to impose restrictions on the movement of Palestinians on both sides of the Wall, and settlement construction and expansion increased.
Israeli settlers abducted and violently attacked a Palestinian child from Hizma village, near Jerusalem, the child was moved to a Palestinian hospital in Jerusalem suffering serious concussions and bruises after he fell unconscious while the settlers were torturing him.
Six Palestinian houses were demolished by the Israeli soldiers in Al Jeftlik village north of Jericho and Al Sawahra village, southeast of Jerusalem. Soldiers claimed that the houses were built without licenses. The army refuse to issue such licenses for construction that is needed to meet the natural population growth.
The Gaza Strip remained under strict siege, and the movement between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip remained restricted.
In spite of Israeli reports that the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, ordered the army to ease restrictions on checkpoints in the occupied West Bank, soldiers continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians.
The army declared on 16 January 2007 that they removed 44 sand roadblocks that had blocked the entrances of some Palestinian villages in the West Bank, but Israeli military sources asserted later that most of those barriers had been removed before the decisions were taken.
The construction of the Annexation Wall continued inside the West Bank, and on Thursday morning, 18 January 2007, soldiers declared that they would decrease the hours of opening of the gate at the entrance of Jayous village, northeast of Qalqilia, from 12 to 3 hours daily.
The so-called Civil Administration Office, that belongs to the Military Command in the occupied West Bank, requested residents of Barata’a village, southwest of Jenin, to obtain magnetic cards in addition to existing permits to be able to pass through the gate established on the Wall at the entrance of the village, the PCHR added.
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