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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Thursday, January 28, 2016.
Seven Palestinian fighters die in Gaza tunnel collapse, and in the West Bank Israeli troops kidnap civilians including a lawmaker. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.
The al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said seven of its fighters were buried under the rubble when a border tunnel collapsed on them, on Tuesday evening, and that four other fighters managed to exit the tunnel.
The Brigades stated that the tunnel collapsed due to heavy rain while the fighters were conducting maintenance work.
After the tunnel collapsed, al-Qassam announced it lost communication with what it called an “elite unit,” while it members were in the tunnel.
Elsewhere, Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Thursday at dawn, eleven Palestinians, including three children and an elderly legislator, after the soldiers stormed many homes and searched them, mainly in the Old City, the al-‘Isawiyya town, Kafr Aqab and Shu’fat.
soldiers invaded the home of legislator Mohammad Abu Teir, 65, in Kafr Aqab town, and abducted him. Abu Teir is a former political prisoner who was repeatedly kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel, spending around 32 years in prison. Several years ago, Israel revoked Abu Teir’s Jerusalem ID card, and forced him out of the city.
Moreover, Israeli soldiers invaded, earlier on Thursday, several districts in the occupied West Bank, searched many homes and kidnapped ten Palestinians, including a father and his son. Kidnappings and home searches were reported in Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Tulkarem cities.
In other news, Israeli authorities, overnight, served several Palestinian families with eviction orders from Ein al-Rushrash, a locality southeast Douma village, south of Nablus, according to a local activist.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement construction in northern West Bank, said that Israeli forces handed a number of Palestinian families orders notifying them of the intention to evict them from Ein al-Rushrash.
Daghlas noted that there are about 85 Palestinians living in 30 residential structures in this locality. This comes just 16 days after Israel announced plans to install six watchtowers along a main north-south West Bank road, and delivered stop-construction orders to Palestinian houses in Khirbat al-Marajim, also south of Douma.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Thursday, January 28, 2016, 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.
