The army demolishes two houses in the West Bank and arrests 27 Palestinians

Israeli air strikes on Gaza after intercepting a missile

Smoke rises during Israeli air strikes on Gaza City.

Reuters

Yesterday, Israeli planes bombed Gaza, in response to a missile fired from the Strip, after the United States urged all parties a few days ago to stop the escalating violence.

The bombing coincided with the Israeli forces launching a massive campaign of arrests, targeting 27 Palestinians from the West Bank, and demolishing two houses in Duma village, south of Nablus.

In detail, the Israeli army said that its air strikes targeted missile manufacturing sites and weapons used by the "Hamas" movement, in response to the launch of a missile on Wednesday.

Strong explosions shook the buildings, and the darkness of the night lit up the Gaza sky, while warning sirens sounded again in Israeli areas around the Strip, to warn of the arrival of more missiles before dawn yesterday.

The Palestinian News and Information Agency (Wafa) said that "Israeli F-16 warplanes bombed with at least five missiles a site in the central Gaza Strip, which led to its destruction and fire, and damage to the homes and property of neighboring citizens."

There was no claim of responsibility for the rocket launch on Wednesday from Hamas or the Islamic Jihad movement, which fired rockets at Israel last week.

And the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine announced that it had fired barrages of rockets at Israel, early yesterday, saying that this was a response to the air strikes and punitive policies against Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken urged the two sides to calm down during his visit to the region on Tuesday, as he reaffirmed Washington's support for the two-state solution as a way to end the decades-old conflict.

Barbara Leaf, the chief US diplomat for Middle East affairs, and Hadi Amr, the US special representative for Palestinian affairs in the region, remained to continue the truce talks between the two sides.

Israel's hardline national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, said in a tweet after the rocket launch on Wednesday that he would press ahead with plans to make conditions for Palestinian prisoners more difficult.

Meanwhile, the Israeli forces launched a massive campaign of arrests, targeting 27 Palestinians from the West Bank, most of them from Ramallah.

Yesterday, the Palestinian News and Information Agency (Wafa) reported that the arrests included five from Al-Bireh, three from Nablus, and four from Tulkarem and Hebron.

A Palestinian official had reported that the Israeli forces had arrested, at dawn yesterday, 15 Palestinians from the village of al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, most of them children.

Marzouq Abu Naim, a member of the village council of al-Mughayyir, said, "The forces stormed the village at dawn, and launched a massive campaign of arrests, affecting at least 15 people."

And in Ramallah, Palestinian local sources said that Israeli forces demolished, yesterday, two houses in the village of Douma, south of Nablus, under the pretext of building without a permit in Area C, which is under Israeli security and administrative control.

According to the sources, during the evacuation of the two houses, the Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters at the residents, as a result of which a number of them suffocated.

The head of the Duma village council, Suleiman Dawabsha, stated that the Israeli authorities reject any expansion of the village's master plan, while the village's residents, who number 3,500, are facing 200 orders to stop building and demolish homes and facilities that they had to build in areas classified as "C".

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