BICOM

Overnight, a member of the Israeli police’s elite anti-terror unit suffered moderate injuries in the refugee camp of Jenin in the northern West Bank.

Israeli security forces entered the camp under cover of darkness to apprehend a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad official who was not home at the time. However, Majdi Abu al-Hija, an individual with ties to Hamas was arrested together with his brother in the raid. His mother and son were also detained. Palestinian media reports indicate that as a number of houses in the camp were surrounded, rioting broke out and hundreds of residents began throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the soldiers. Five Palestinians were injured from tear gas inhalation during the incident as security forces attempted to disperse the crowds.

The raid occurs at the end of a month replete with terror attacks. Yesterday, an IDF patrol shot at a Palestinian car after its driver attempted to run it over, wounding one soldier. Last week a Palestinian man stabbed a Border Policeman with an axe near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s OId City. The perpetrator had been released by Israel in 2013 as part of a deal with the Palestinian Authority and had been serving a sentence for murdering Prof Menachem Stern, an Israel Prize laureate, in 1989.

This morning, sirens wailed across Israel’s southern region as a rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip in the direction of the city of Ashkelon. The rocket failed to leave Gaza’s airspace and fell within the Palestinian territory. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a terrorist organisation that has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the launch. This is the second rocket launch in less than a week. The previous rocket fell in a field in the Eshkol regional council causing no injuries or damage to property.