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Israeli Armored Vehicles Destroy Palestinian Outposts in Hebron
Israel sent armored vehicles into a Palestinian-controlled area of Hebron early Monday morning and destroyed outposts of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's personal guard Force 17, an Israeli army spokeswoman said.
This was Israeli army's second such incursion into the Palestinian part of the West Bank city of in three days.
The Israeli army "only used armored vehicles, instead of tanks as reported by media," the spokeswoman said, adding that the vehicles stayed in the areas for five to 10 minutes and destroyed two outposts, not five as reported.
She said that there was no Israeli casualty, while Palestinian sources said that tanks moved into Hebron from three directions and wounded at least nine Palestinians.
There are about 500 Jewish settlers living among 120,000 Palestinians in the divided Hebron, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast War.
Last week, two Jewish settlers in Hebron were killed by Palestinian gunmen in shooting incidents, prompting the Israeli army to move tanks into the Palestinian part of the city on Thursday. The tanks were withdrawn shortly afterwards.
Palestinian witnesses said that Monday's operation was much larger.
Nearly 10 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloody clashes have left more than 600 people dead, most of them Palestinians.
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