Israeli troops killed a top commander of Fatah military wing during a raid in the West Bank on Thursday and ended a six-day incursion in Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
Fadi Khafisha of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, was one of the senior "engineers" or bomb makers in the Fatah-linked armed group, Israeli sources conveyed. They said soldiers shot him dead in the Old City at the heart of Nablus and that another senior activist was among five people injured in the clash.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers who had been conducting an operation began withdrawing from the outskirts of Gaza City on Thursday, the army said, according to Haaretz. Palestinian emergency officials said that the troops, who first raided the Shajaiyeh neighborhood late Saturday, killed a total of 18 Palestinians, many of them civilians, in airstrikes and gunbattles over the past five days.
The Isaeli army released footage and photos Wednesday of a tunnel dug by Palestinians from Shajaiyeh to the Karni crossing, the main cargo crossing between Gaza Strip and Israel. The tunnel was to be used for an attack on soldiers at the crossing, the Israeli army said.
