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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Thursday February 16th, 2012.
Six Palestinians mostly children killed in a bus, truck collision near Ramallah, meanwhile, six were wounded in two Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, these stories and more, coming up, stay tuned.
At least six Palestinians, most of them were children died and 39 others were wounded when a bus collided with a truck near the West Bank city of Ramallah Thursday morning, according to a Palestinian official source.
Apparently the bus was carrying students going to school when it was hit with a truck that slide because of the bad weather conditions. The bus flipped and caught fire.
On their part, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Dr. Salam Fayyad expressed sorrow for this accident and called for an investigation into the incident. President Abbas also declared a three-day mourning, during which all schools will be closed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a letter of condolences to the bereaved families and offered assistance to the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu’s move came after a number of Israelis commented on Facebook wishing more accidents like this to happen in order to” lower the number of terrorists”.
In other news, an Israeli military force invaded the offices and homes of three Palestinian members of Parliament and confiscated their computers and cell phones in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Israeli troops broke into the house and office of Ibrahim Dahbour, Khaled Suleiman and Khaled Yahia in the West Bank city of Jenin and were interrogated by an Israeli intelligence officer.
The invading troops took the cell phones, computers and some private documents form the MP’s homes without showing any search warrant.
Khaled Suleiman said the soldiers told him that they are closing the office until further notice, but gave him no written official order proving their claim.
On Wednesday night, Israeli settlers invaded Joseph’s Tomb site in the West Bank city of Nablus. The Maan news Agency reported that around 10 bus-loads of settlers accompanied by a number of Israeli military vehicles invaded the city of Nablus and dropped the settlers at Joseph’s Tomb to conduct some religious ceremony at the site.
Settlers remained on the site for few hours and left Thursday morning. No clashes were reported. Joseph’s Tomb is believed to be the site were Joseph son of Jacob was buried and is a holy shrine for Christians Muslims and Jews.
Although the site is in the city of Nablus, which is under the Oslo accords defined as Zone A, the site was under Israeli control until Israel left the site in October 2000.
In the Gaza Strip, six Palestinian civilians have been wounded in two air strikes by the Israeli air force that targeted two locations in the early hours of Thursday morning.
According to a Palestinian media source, the first target is allegedly a center for Al-Aqsa brigade, the armed wing of the Islamic Hamas movement, in at-Tuffah neighborhood in east of Gaza city.
The second strike hit a location said to be a center for al-Quds brigade, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine in the Nusseirat area in the central Gaza Strip causing damage to property but no injuries.
In the meantime, Israeli sources said that four home-made shells hit Ashkoul area in Southern Israel, however, no injuries were reported.
That’s all for today from the IMEMC News, this was the Thursday February 16th daily roundup of news from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We hope you will join us again tomorrow. This has been brought to you by Husam Qassis and me, George Rishmawi.
