THE Palestinian labour minister, Mohammed el Barghuti, has been arrested by Israeli soldiers at a roadblock near Ramallah in the West Bank, his entourage said overnight.
The arrest came as Israeli planes carried out an air strike on the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis overnight, an Israeli army spokeswoman said. "Our aircraft attacked a building in Khan Yunis which was being used to store arms and as a workshop for producing rockets," the spokeswoman said.
A Palestinian security source said two rockets landed in the courtyard of the house of Zaki Dardissi, a local official of the ruling Islamist Hamas movement, but that nobody was hurt. The raid followed Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip earlier on Wednesday, part of an Israeli offensive aimed at freeing an Israeli soldier captured by armed Palestinians. |