- Title: MIDDLE EAST: Palestinians die in Israeli raid and airstrike
- Date: 6th June 2007
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) MAN SAYING: "A family, a family sitting at home. They came, like crazed dogs, they came, the bastards, and as soon as they opened the door, they started firing. They killed a man, the head of the family, he's around 80-years-old - they killed him on the doorstep. His wife came out screaming and they shot her and then they shot his brother and his son a
- Embargoed: 21st June 2007 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: War / Fighting
- Reuters ID: LVA16QEIRIHM8XRMVG23BTXRHIL6
- Story Text: Israel killed two Palestinian men on Wednesday (June 6), one during a raid in the occupied West Bank, and another in an air strike in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics and security sources said.
In the first incident, troops opened fire on a Palestinian man during an arrest raid on a house in the West Bank town of Hebron, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. She said the soldiers opened fire after a group of men assaulted them and tried to grab their weapons.
A Palestinian security source told Reuters that soldiers came to a house in Hebron before dawn and shot a man who answered the door, killing him, then shot his wife, wounding her.
Medics said the man killed in Hebron was 67. Three other men in the home were also wounded by gunfire, the source said.
The daughter of the dead man said the soldiers killed her father and then shot and wounded her mother and brother.
"My mother told him (the soldier) to stay away from him (my father) and he shot him, my mother yelled 'nooo' and he shot my mother, and he shot my brother Rajeh," the daughter said as she sat crying in the back of an ambulance.
"He shot them all, he shot them all."
A neighbour was furious at the shooting. He said the man shot dead was 80 years old, which could not be independently confirmed.
"They came, like crazed dogs, they came, the bastards, and as soon as they (the family) opened the door, they started firing," the neighbour said.
"They killed a man, the head of the family, he's around 80 years old - they killed him on the doorstep. His wife came out screaming and they shot her and then they shot his brother and his son and his son and his son - go look at the house, it's a pool of blood."
Although the neighbour said a total of five had been shot, this could not be independently confirmed.
In Gaza, Israel fired at two armed Palestinians "who were spotted planting explosives," the spokeswoman said.
Hamas said that one of its militants was killed in the attack.
Israel has stepped up raids against suspected militants in the West Bank and Gaza, in response to an increasing number of rocket attacks from Gaza against Israeli towns in the past few weeks.
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