More Palestinians are killed in confrontation with Israeli forces
Palestine-Israel, Military, 6/21/2004

A jailed activist from the Palestinian Jihad resistance group who broke out of an Israeli prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah and was recaptured hours after his escape, Israeli occupation sources said.

The 24-year-old activist broke out of the Ofer prison camp just west of Ramallah, by climbing over the fence the sources said without releasing the prisoner's name. Some 12 hours later, he was arrested by troops at a checkpoint on a road just east of Ramallah.

Further north, about 50 military jeeps rolled into the Askar refugee camp in Nablus and imposed a curfew, witnesses and Palestinian security sources said. Occupation troops also searched the home of a Palestinian police officer arrested the previous day and detained two of his brothers, witnesses said.

In the Gaza Strip, occupation sources said Palestinian resistance fired two makeshift rockets, one of which landed in Israel and the other close to a Jewish settlement in the north of the territory. Neither caused any injuries. Late Friday, two Gaza City workshops suspected of being used to manufacture rockets were flattened in an Israeli air strike just hours after a similar firing. Earlier, Israeli helicopter gunships struck two metal foundries, injuring four passers-by hours after Palestinian militants fired rockets at an Israeli town. An occupation army spokesman confirmed the attack, saying Israel had destroyed "two weapon workshops that were a part of the weapons production industry in the Gaza Strip," which he said Palestinians had used to manufacture rockets to launch at Israeli targets.

Palestinian witnesses said ambulances raced to the scenes shortly after Israel`s latest air raid, which came hours after Gaza activists fired a Qassam-type rocket in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, causing slight damage but no casualties. Israel Radio had reported earlier that the rockets that landed in Sderot were deadlier, more sophisticated and possessed a higher range than the types that had previously struck Israeli towns and Jewish settlements in Gaza. Israel's cabinet approved in principle Prime Minister Ariel Sharon' plan to evacuate Gaza, but Israeli hardliners and some members of his right-wing Likud party fear such a pullout would give Palestinian militants a green light to take control of it.

Previous Stories:
  Haaretz: Arafat vows to control Gaza and confronts resistance   (6/19/2004)
  Israel prepares a plan to intensify settlements in the West Bank; Al-Aqsa, al-Jihad claim responsibility for blowing up a car near Natsareim   (6/16/2004)
  Israeli forces start annexation of Ariel settlement in the depth of the west bank, Israeli Apache assassinates one Palestinian   (6/15/2004)
  Israeli helicopters destroy two industrial workshops in Gaza   (6/9/2004)
  One occupation vehicle is destroyed, Two Israeli soldiers wounded in Gaza   (5/26/2004)
  Israeli occupation forces are redeployed in Rafah   (5/21/2004)

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