An Israeli army contingent invaded early on Thursday morning the northern Gaza Strip city of Beit Hanoun and kidnapped several local residents.
Witnesses said that the Israeli army’s tanks and bulldozers, under a barrage of heavy gun fire, invaded the outskirts of Beit Hanoun city and forced local inhabitants out of their houses.
Palestinian security sources said that the Israeli soldiers nabbed several inhabitants of the Kafarna , Hammad, Almasri and aL-Adasi families, after forcing those from the age of 16, to go out in the open.
Those rounded up, estimated at dozens, were carried handcuffed in buses then taken to unknown destinations inside the Israeli border lines.
Inhabitant Mohammad Alkafarna told media outlets that the Israeli forces cordoned off the Alfarta neighborhood and rounded up a large number of residents, after conducting house-to-house searches.
Alkafarna pointed out that the Israeli bulldozers razed vast areas of locals-owned lands in the neighborhood, devastating water and electricity networks.
The Beit Hanoun city is a an agricultural area, adjacent to the Israeli territories in northern Gaza, where Palestinian homemade shells fire is being launched by Palestinian resistance factions onto nearby Israeli towns.
In the past 24 hours, the Israeli army killed two Palestinian resistance fighters and wounded 9 others involving civilians during separate attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Israeli attacks on the coastal territory come as the Egyptian-mediated truce talks between Israel and the resistance factions have been reportedly deadlocked after Israel demanded the release of an Israeli soldier, captured in Gaza since June2006.
