Israeli troops continue Nablus raid, Palestinian taxi driver killed

Jun 29, 2007, 6:59 GMT

Ramallah - Israeli soldiers pressed on with a search-and- arrest raid in Nablus for the second day running Friday, witnesses and the military said.

The soldiers shot dead an unarmed, 25-year-old taxi driver who failed to heed orders to stop in the northern West Bank city, hospital officials said.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed the taxi driver was unarmed, but said he was transporting two armed militants and that the soldiers were directing their fire at them.

Since the operation began early Thursday, the soldiers arrested at least nine 'wanted' militants, several of them members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party.

They also uncovered an explosives laboratory and confiscated some pipe bombs, grenades, ammunition and equipment in several other apartments during house-to-house searches in the Casbah or historic Old City centre, the army said.

On Friday, the army expanded the searches to the Nablus' Balate refugee camp.

Four Israeli soldiers were injured, two of them seriously, in clashes Thursday with local militants who confronted them with semi- automatic fire and detonated six explosive devices against them.

New Palestinian Information Minister Riad Malki, who also serves as spokesman for the emergency government set up by President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, condemned the Nablus raid as well as a military incursion in Gaza earlier this week which targeted rocket launchers and in which 12 Palestinians were killed.

In a statement late Thursday, he accused Israel of undermining his government's efforts to impose security, law and order in the West Bank after Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip.

Referring to the al-Aqsa Brigades, he said the Nablus raid targeted 'groups who expressed willingness to cooperate with the government to end lawlessness.'

Abbas issued a presidential decree this week, ordering all Palestinian armed groups to hand in their weapons. Al-Aqsa commanders however have in fact said they did not regard the decree as applying to them and vowed to hold on to their arms.

The Israeli military said the raid was aimed at foiling ongoing attempts by al-Aqsa and Islamic Jihad militants to launch suicide bombings from the city inside Israel, pointing out that 117 would-be suicide bombers were arrested and nine bomb belts tracked down in Nablus during similar raids in 2006.