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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Monday, May 4th, 2015.
Israeli attacks on West Bank communities leave one civilian injured and military training set fire to Palestinian lands in the Jordan Valley. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.
A young Palestinian man was shot and injured, on Monday at dawn, by Israeli army in Beit Forik town, east of the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Many more residents suffered the effects of tear gas inhalation.
Eyewitnesses said that several Israeli military vehicles invaded the town, during early dawn hours, and clashed with dozens of local youths in Dar Hasan neighborhood. Local youths hurled stones and empty bottles on the invading vehicles, while the soldiers fired rounds of live ammunition, rubber-coated metal bullets, gas bombs and concussion grenades.
Local sources said a number of cars sustained damage, mainly to their front shields, after being struck by Israeli gas bombs and fire. Soldiers also broke into a number of homes and violently searched them, causing excessive property damage.
Also on Monday at dawn, Israeli soldiers kidnapped 19 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, including twelve in Hebron, and 2 Palestinians near the Gaza border fence.
Elsewhere on Monday, Fire erupted in a northern Jordan Valley grazing land after Israeli army embarked on live ammunition military training in the area, according to a local sources.
The fire engulfed large tracts of pastures used for grazing animals. Local sources added that the army denied locals from accessing their land to put out the fire.
On Sunday, Israeli military drills near Nablus caused significant damage to hundreds of dunums of Palestinian-owned land.
In the Gaza Strip, an explosive device blew up near a major square in Gaza City late Sunday, security officials said.The device exploded in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, with no injuries reported.
Police arrived at the scene and are investigating the incident, as the circumstances behind the explosion are as of yet unclear. Gaza has seen a series of violent incidents in recent months, the majority involving attacks on the property of Fatah officials in the Hamas-dominated region.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Monday, May 4th, 2015 news round-up from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. For more news and updates, please visit our website at www.imemc.org. Today’s report has been brought to you by George Rishmawi and Ghassan Bannoura.
