Palestinians expressed outrage today after an internal army investigation cleared Israeli soldiers who killed 12 Palestinians in three incidents last week. None of those killed were carrying firearms.
Meanwhile, in the early hours of the morning, Israeli troops moved into the town of Deir el Balah in the Gaza Strip, arresting six men and destroying two buildings the army said were bases for weapon-making.
Yesterday, Israel imposed curfews on most West Bank towns and froze Palestinian travel to keep out militants during the Jewish New Year holiday.
The restrictions confined more than 630,000 Palestinians to their homes.
Israeli army vehicles and ground forces surrounded Deir el Balah under cover of machine gun fire, Palestinian security officials said.
The army said the raid was in response to Thursday's attack on an Israeli tank by Palestinian militants, in which two soldiers were killed and four others wounded.
Just before the start of the Jewish New Year holiday at sundown yesterday, the military released the results of an investigation into the killings of 12 Palestinians by Israeli soldiers over four days last week.
The report said that in two cases, Palestinians were moving in a suspicious manner in areas that were off-limits to civilians, and soldiers acted according to regulations when they opened fire.
In the third incident, in which two Palestinian children and two teenagers were killed in a targeted missile attack on suspected militants, one of the missiles missed the target, apparently because of a technical mistake, the statement said.
The army had investigated the deaths of four Palestinian farmers in Gaza, four labourers in a West Bank quarry and the four youngsters in the missile attack.
Military officials said the quarry workers had been masked, armed with an axe and that there was "a possibility" they were en route to carrying out an attack.
The teenagers killed in the missile attack were accomplices of the wanted militiamen, the military officials said. Palestinians have insisted all 12 were civilians.
Responding to the findings, Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said it was "shameful for Israel not to bring to justice those who kill innocent children, innocent mothers in cold blood".
AP