Israeli army arrests students
2004-05-03 10:32
Ramallah, West Bank - The Israeli army on Monday arrested 27 Islamist students at a teacher training college in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
An army spokesperson said only four of those detained in the pre-dawn raid were wanted militants and that the other 23 would be released after questioning.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers also staged a brief incursion into a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah and demolished three Palestinian houses near the Egyptian border, Palestinian security sources said.
The operation came after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party rejected his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip in a vote observers said was influenced by the killing of a Jewish settler woman and her four children in the territory.
The army carries out frequent raids into Gaza camps in what it says are operations aimed at destroying structures sheltering the entrances to cross-border arms-smuggling tunnels.
The Israeli army also said that the total closure slapped on the Palestinian territories after the March 22 assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had been extended until further notice.
On Sunday night, Israeli helicopters carried out a rare air raid in the West Bank, killing four militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the city of Nablus, security sources on both sides said.
- AFP