Palestinian security: IDF troops kill 4 miltants, civilian in West Bank

On Wednesday, IDF troops ambushed a group of Palestinian militants near the West Bank town of Jenin, killing four, Palestinian security officials said.

After the ambush and the ensuing gunbattle, a 30-year-old civilian man had climbed to his a rooftop to observe the clashes was shot and killed, security and medical officials said.

The military said it was checking the report.

Four local commanders of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party, were walking in the streets of Kfar Yamoun in the early morning when Israeli troops opened fire, the security officials said.

The troops and militants exchanged fire, and the men fled into a nearby olive grove, where other soldiers shot them dead, they said.

Earlier Wednesday, an Israel Air Force air strike destroyed the house of a leading Hamas militant in Gaza City, Hamas and security sources said.

The air strike targeted the home of Ahmed al-Jabari, second in command of Hamas' military wing. No one was injured in the strike, they said, as the occupants were warned ahead of time to leave.

The Israel Defense Forces had no immediate comment.

10 Palestinians Killed on TuesdayOn Tuesday, IDF troops killed seven Palestinians, including an unarmed woman, in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, hours after formally ending a six-day offensive in the northern town of Beit Hanun and retreating to the outskirts of the area.

Also Tuesday, four Qassam rockets landed in Ashkelon, one of them striking an area school. A fifth rocket landed near the western Negev town of Sderot. IDF troops responded to the rockets by firing artillery on the areas from which they were launched.

Fifty-three Palestinians, including 17 civilians, and an IDF soldier were killed during operation in Beit Hanun which spanned from last Wednesday until early Tuesday morning.

Two militants affiliated with Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade were killed Tuesday afternoon in a gunbattle with IDF troops in the northern gaza Strip, near the site of the former settlement of Dugit.

Hours after leaving Beit Hanun, troops shot and killed two Islamic Jihad militants in the Jabalya camp. In a separate incident, an IDF tank shell killed three people when it hit the Jabalya home of Jamila Shanti, the Hamas legislator who organized a women's protest that allowed militants to escape from a northern Gaza mosque under Israeli siege.

Shanti's sister-in-law, who was in the house at the time and unarmed, was killed. The legislator's bodyguard and another Hamas militant, who were also in the house, were killed as well.

The army said a tank opened fire after Palestinian militants launched two rocket-propelled grenades at soldiers. It said it was responding to the attack and did not target a specific house.

In a statement issued following the withdrawal from Beit Hanun, the IDF said infantry, engineering and armored forces successfully completed their operations, which were aimed against terror infrastructure and rocket launching infrastructure in the northern Gaza town.

In its statement, however, the IDF continued to warn civilians to stay away from combat areas. "The IDF will continue to act with determination in order to destroy terrorist organizations and terrorist infrastructure and in order to prevent and disrupt the launching of rockets at Israel," the statement read.

The IDF said forces took up new positions inside the Gaza Strip, outside of the embattled town. Residents reported troops and tanks withdrawing from Beit Hanun overnight.

Senior Southern Command officers said the operation reached its goals and that terror organization networks in the northern Gaza Strip were delivered a heavy blow.

Officers said IDF would continue operating in the area on a smaller scale.

	A Palestinian boy watching the destroyed al-Naser mosque following the IDF withdrawal from Beit Hanun. (Reuters)