One Palestinian was killed in the Gaza Strip while in the West Bank the Israeli army attacked Nablus city and kidnapped 20 civilians, these stories and more coming up stay tuned.

The West Bank

At least twenty Palestinian civilians have been kidnapped in Nablus, when Israeli troops invaded the nearby Balata refugee camp in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Eyewitnesses reported that among those kidnapped was the wife of an operative of the al-Aqsa Brigades (the armed wing of Fatah), who was taken in order to force him to turn himself in to the army. Elsewhere the Israeli soldiers also invaded the West Bank cities of Jenin and Hebron and kidnapped an additional 5 civilians.

Hamas sources reported on Wednesday that the preventative security forces affiliated with the Fatah movement arrested 15 Hamas members from several West Bank cities on Tuesday evening. One member of the movement, who was detained by the security forces in Qalqilia, was sent to the hospital following interrogation. According to a statement faxed to the press, the arrests took place in the cities of Tulkarem and Jenin in the northern part of the West Bank and in Hebron city in the southern part of the West Bank.

The Temporary International Mechanism (TIM) will provide Euro 21 million this month to the Palestinian Authority this month, to pay the salaries of its employees, a press release by the European Commission stated. At least 160 thousand Palestinians, including service providers and pensioners in close cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, will benefit from this aid package.

The Gaza strip

On Wednesday, the Israeli army demolished a Palestinian-owned house to the east of Deir Elbalah city in the central Gaza Strip, media reports and witnesses said.

This is the third time in the last 7 years that the two-storey house, which is located on the eastern outskirts of Deir Al Balah has been demolished. In the meantime, at least three people were reportedly injured and a fourth is said to be missing after a tunnel on the Gaza-Egypt border collapsed. Palestinian Media sources reported recently that some Palestinians use tunnels to access goods and commodities, in a time when the Israeli army has been imposing strict closures on Gaza's crossings, since the Islamist Hamas group took over the region in mid June.

One Palestinian resident has been reported killed and two others wounded after mourners, belonging to the Islamic Jihad group, traded gun-fire with Palestinian policemen in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. Witnesses told IMEMC that during the funeral procession of an Islamic Jihad member, who died of wounds he sustained in clashes with Hamas earlier, gunmen of the Islamic Jihad opened fire towards a Hamas-run police station, then an exchange of gun shots broke out.

Conclusion

Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem. You have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, brought to you by Jane Smith and Ghassan Bannoura.