GAZA CITY, Feb 26: The Israeli army on Tuesday occupied two Palestinian self-rule villages in the central Gaza Strip and imposed a strict curfew on them, Palestinian security sources said.
Israeli troops in jeeps and tanks entered Abu Al-Ajeen and Wadi al-Salqa, which they had briefly taken over earlier in the day, and announced over loudspeakers that a curfew was being imposed until further notice, the security sources said.
Witnesses said the Israelis warned in Arabic that anyone violating the curfew would be shot.
Israeli troops then searched homes in the neighbouring villages, which lie between the Kfar Darom Jewish settlement to the north and an access road from Israel to the Gush Katif bloc of Jewish settlements to the southwest.
“They informed us officially that there is a curfew in this area. And this means re-occupation,” said Colonel Khaled Abu Ula, a senior Palestinian security official who liaises with the Israeli army.
But Israeli military sources denied they had taken over the villages but had deployed at the edges of the communities before announcing a curfew to prevent attacks on passing Israeli traffic on the Kisufim road, where three Israelis were killed in an ambush on Feb 18.
The source said it would only last overnight.
Earlier on Tuesday, more than 20 Israeli soldiers backed by three tanks detained two Palestinians when they entered Wadi al-Salqa, said Yusef Abu al-Ajeen, head of the municipality.
The soldiers, who advanced about one kilometer (half a mile) into Palestinian territory, came from the nearby Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, he added.
It was not clear whether the two Palestinians were wanted as members of militant groups.
Four other Palestinians were detained by Israeli troops in the West Bank early Tuesday, the army said in a statement.
One was seized near Nablus, another two near Tulkarem in the north and one in an autonomous village of Bidu, north of Jerusalem.
Palestinian residents of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip also said two Palestinian teenagers were slightly wounded in clashes that erupted during an Israeli incursion into the impoverished neighbourhood of al-Tufah near Khan Yunis.
A reporter saw an Israeli tank and bulldozer deployed in the area amid the occasional crackle of gunfire, while watching the departure of one ambulance.
Dozens of Palestinians, many of them children, huddled behind buildings for safety as at least one gunman arrived on the scene.
The man, armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, told AFP: “As you see, they (Israelis) will come forward more and I predict more martyrs.”
A witness said that it was the first time in a week that gunmen had engaged the Israelis in a firefight, though the intensity of the battle was relatively low.—AFP