Israel arrests 23 Palestinians in West Bank
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-12-08 17:26

Israeli forces arrested 23 wanted Palestinians in the West Bank early on Thursday, the Ha'aretz daily said, quoting a military source.

Twenty activists of the radical Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) were rounded up in the village of Beit Laqiya, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, and three Palestinians were detained in two other areas, the source said.

The arrests were the latest in a series of clampdown operations in the West Bank following a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis at a shopping center in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya on Monday.

Late Wednesday night, an Israel Air Force warplane fired a missile at a target in the northern Gaza Strip, which fell in an open area and caused no casualties, witnesses said.

The military said its aircraft had attacked an access road to the site from where rockets had been launched.

The air strike came after Palestinian militants fired three homemade rockets and one mortar shell from Gaza into Israel, with one rocket landing near the Erez crossing between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli military said.

Earlier Wednesday, Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a car in which Palestinian militants were traveling in the southern Gaza Strip region of Rafah, killing Mahmud el-Arqan, field commander of the Popular Resistance Committees.

A spokesman of the group threatened revenge for the Israeli assassination.

"We are ready to respond," Mohammad Abad al-Gral said, "and the response will be hard and painful."

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has given green light to the resumption of targeted killings in the wake of the Netanya suicide bombing.

Israeli security officials said the military response "will be a show of strength but not something that will get out of control. "