October 23, 2002	Wednesday	Sha’aban 16,1423

NABLUS, Oct 22: The Israeli army demolished the homes of two Palestinian teenagers suspected of carrying out in a suicide bombing and numerous anti-Israeli attacks, witnesses and the Israeli army said on Tuesday.

Witnesses said troops blew up the house of Ibrahim Yasser Naji, 19, in the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank town of Nablus.

The army also destroyed the home of another Palestinian militant, Mohammed Ismail Attallah, 18 in the village of Salem, east of Nablus.

An army statement named Naji, a member of the Tanzim armed group linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, as one of the bombers in a double suicide attack in Tel Aviv in July which killed six people and wounded some 40.

The Tel Aviv blast was claimed by the radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, which on Monday carried out a suicide attack on an Israeli bus with an explosives-laden car that killed 16 people.

Attallah was responsible for numerous shooting attacks at Israeli cars, the preparation of car bombs and explosives, and supplying explosives to a suicide bomber, causing numerous injuries and the death of at least one person, the army said.

The destruction of the homes of militants has been denounced by human rights groups as collective punishment.—AFP