At least 17 Palestinians were arrested on Saturday after the Israeli army conducted wide-scale house-to-house searches south of the West Bank city of Hebron and in the villages of al-Sammoa, Yatta, Doura, al-Reehiyya and al-Award refugee camp.
The Hebron office of the Palestinian Prisoners Society reported that soldiers broke into dozens of homes at dawn and during the early morning hours and arrested 17 residents.
The office had managed to identify ten of the arrested residents at the time of this report.
They are Khaldoun Heidan al-Sharabati, 29, Abdul-Karim As’ad al-Qawasmi, and Ibrahim Hisham abu Sneina, all from Hebron; Ahmad Atiyya abu Warda, 24, and Mustafa abu Shamiyya, 39, from al-Fawwar refugee camp; Bajes Mahmoud al-Najajra, 22, from Yatta; Abdullah Jamil al-Daghameen, 22, from al-Sammoa’; Fares Fawzi al-Toubassy, 23, from al-Reehiyya; Arafat Mohammad al-Arman, 22, and Bashir Ibrahim Masharqa, 19, from Doura.
The families told the WAFA news agencies in separate statements that soldiers were violent during the searches and deliberately caused damage to furniture and belongings.
Dozens of residents were held and interrogated for several hours after soldiers completely surrounded their neighborhoods.
