(MENAFN- Palestine News Network) RAMALLAH/PNN/
IOF forces, including infantry and military bulldozers, raided the city of Ramallah early on Saturday, breaking into the Amari refugee camp in the south of the city just after midnight. Hundreds of soldiers surrounded a building owned by the Abu Hmeid family in the centre of the camp. The Israeli forces claim that the family's son, Islam, killed an Israeli soldier during a raid of the camp in June.
Palestinian activists and supporters had kept an around-the clock vigil around the building to prevent its demotion, after Israeli courts had approved its demolition as collective punishment against the family. The demonstrators were beaten and attacked with pepper spray by sodliers, and around 500 women men and children of all ages were removed by force to a football field nearby.
The Israeli soldiers blew up the building by rigging the house with explosives, fully demolishing the house by 9.30 this morning, leaving a plot of rubble, which it is believed is intended for settlement building.
Residents of the camp responded by throwing stones at the soldiers, who fired tear gas and stun grenades, causing dozens of injuries; at least 10 Palestinians were transferred to hospitals, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Medical and Press crews were also attacked in the raid, with one photographer hit by a tear gas canister in the head, and was hospitalized.
"We will not fall down and we will not surrender, and my house is a sacrifice for Palestine and its people, and if the occupation destroys it, we will rebuild," the mother of the family, Umm Nasser Abu Humaid, 72, told Palestine Television.
The army had previously demolished the Abu Hmeid house twice, in 1994 and 2003. Five of the family members, not including Islam, are serving time in prison for resisting the Israeli occupation, four sentenced to multiple life terms, and another son was killed during a military operation against the Israeli occupation forces.
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