Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Wednesday, March, 08, 2017.
Hunger striking political detainee moved to hospital, meanwhile Israeli troops invade West Bank communities and kidnap civilians. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.
Eight Palestinian workers, on Wednesday, survived after a smuggling tunnel collapsed beneath the southern Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt.
Civil defense teams managed to pull out the eight workers who were trapped under rubble after the tunnel collapsed while they were inside it. Smuggling tunnels passing beneath the Egyptian border have served as a lifeline to the outside world for Gaza’s 1.8 million inhabitants, since Israel imposed a crippling siege on the coastal enclave in 2007.
Elsewhere, detained journalist, Mohammad al-Qeeq, who entered his second month of hunger strike, protesting his continued illegal detention by Israel, was moved to a hospital after a serious deterioration in his health condition, the Palestinian Detainees’ Committee reported Wednesday.
The Committee stated that al-Qeeq lost more than twelve kilograms of his bodyweight, is unable to stand or walk on his own, in addition to infections in his eyes, and constant dizziness.
Al-Qeeq was abducted by the Israeli army on January 15, 2117, and started his strike on February 6th, after Israel slapped three-month renewable administrative detention order against him, without charges or trial.
In related news, Israeli soldiers abducted, Wednesday, three workers of the Waqf and Islamic Endowment Department, in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied Jerusalem, for refusing to stop maintenance work on the main gate of the al-Qibli mosque, in Al-Aqsa Compound.
The workers, were trying to fix the gate that was repeatedly damaged by the soldiers in previous attacks.
Moreover, Israeli soldiers abducted three Palestinians from the northern West Bank district of Jenin. Among those abducted a Palestinian tax and customs officer, he was taken by soldiers stationed at a military roadblock near Ya’bad town, west of Jenin while he returning home from work in Tulkarem, in the northern part of the West Bank.
In the meantime, Israeli soldiers abducted, on Wednesday at dawn, two Palestinians in Bethlehem and Tubas, in the occupied West Bank, and summoned one child for interrogation.
In other news, PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi marked International Women’s Day (March 8) by issuing a statement supporting women of Palestine. In a press stamen Dr. Ashrawi said that the Palestinian woman is a basic partner in nation-building and in weaving a just social fabric in Palestine.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Wednesday, March, 08, 2017, news round-up from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. From more news and updates, please visit our website at www.imemc.org today’s report has been brought to you by George Rishmawi and me Ghassan Bannoura.
