The Israeli army denied Tuesday that it had mounted an incursion overnight into a Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, as Palestinian security officials said, according to AFP.
"This report is baseless. Our forces did not enter the refugee camp," a spokesman said, although an army statement acknowledged there had been "clashes" in the area.
Abu Dhabi satellite channel’s correspondent in the area had confirmed the incursion, saying that occupation forces had fired on the camp.
The Palestinians said several homes were destroyed in the self-rule camp, without reporting casualties.
The army statement said troops had "destroyed several abandoned houses near the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt which the Palestinians were using as firing positions, in a sector where Israel is entirely responsible for security."
The statement added that there were exchanges of fire with light weapons during the attack.
The army spokesman also said that two mortar shells were fired early Tuesday at the Gush Katif Jewish settlement bloc in the southern Gaza Strip, causing no casualties.
Meanwhile, Israel tightened its siege of six Palestinian towns in the West Bank, ignoring a US demand to withdraw, insisting that the Palestinian Authority hand over suspects in the assassination of its tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi.
Israeli army bulldozers, escorted by around 20 tanks, smashed the family house of a young suicide bomber who killed 23 young party-goers outside a Tel Aviv nightclub, witnesses said.
The June 1 attack on the Dolphinarium nightclub was claimed by the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas.
Israel launched its latest operation - the biggest military push into the West Bank since the Palestinian Authority was granted self-rule in 1994 - after the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) gunned down Zeevi last week in retaliation for the assassination of their own leader.
In August, Israel's deputy minister for internal security, Gideon Ezra, said security forces should "liquidate" the fathers of Palestinian suicide bombers to discourage further kamikaze attacks, said the agency.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian death toll rose Tuesday as a 13-year-old boy died of wounds sustained in an "exchange of fire" between Palestinians and Israeli forces in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, a hospital spokesman told AFP.
Nasser Koraan, 13, was wounded in the head and chest on Monday, the spokesman said.
Over 700 Palestinians have reportedly been killed in the latest uprising against Israeli occupation, while Israeli casualties are approaching 200.
In addition, the Israeli army kidnapped Tuesday a member of the Islamic Jihad movement from Jabal Al Khalil, local sources told the official Kuwaiti news agency (KUNA).
The sources reported that the Israeli forces kidnapped Yousif Itbaish from his house, 15 kilometers southeast of Hebron in the West Bank.
Special Israeli units, part of the Israeli army, cordoned off Itbaish's house and took him to an unknown destination. Itbaish, 38, has been arrested several times in the past for resisting the 34-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian land conquered in 1967 – Albawaba.com
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