Israeli soldiers throw sound bombs as they clash with Palestinians during a search for suspects of a shooting attack yesterday in the West Bank City of Ramallah, Monday, Dec. 10, 2018. Israeli officials say seven people have been wounded, one critically, in a shooting by a suspected Palestinian assailant outside a Jewish settlement of Ofra in the West Bank. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Israeli soldiers throw sound bombs as they clash with Palestinians during a search for suspects of a shooting attack yesterday in the West Bank City of Ramallah, Monday, December 10, 2018. AP

Israel raids Palestinian news agency as manhunt for settler killers goes on



Israeli forces wounded three Palestinians in intense West Bank clashes on Tuesday as they continued a manhunt for suspected gunmen behind the shooting of seven Israelis outside a settlement two days earlier.

The Israeli military has created new checkpoints around the West Bank town of Ramallah and surrounding villages in the West Bank in a bid to find those behind the shooting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attending a road opening ceremony in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, vowed to avenge the shooting.

"We will chase down the perpetrators and settle the account with them."

Mr Netanyahu said that the Palestinian attacks were aimed at scaring Israelis into leaving the West Bank.

"We will prove to them that their will to uproot us from our land will be met with a fortified wall," he said. "As long as I'm prime minister of Israel, no Jew will be uprooted from his home."

On Monday, they raided the official Palestinian news agency Wafa in broad daylight and entered Ramallah to within hundreds of metres of the residence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Palestinian leader called for an international reaction to the raids and encroachment of Ramallah, which lies in Area A of the West Bank, the section that falls under the civilian and security control of the Palestinian Authority.

Elsewhere in the West Bank on Tuesday,  Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian near the flashpoint city of Hebron, Palestinian officials said.

Wafa identified the dead man as Omar Awwad, 27, and said he was shot by Israeli forces near Hebron. The health ministry confirmed he had died after being taken to hospital.

Israeli police said a man was shot after his car "drove towards border police" at a checkpoint.

"Shots were fired at the suspect vehicle. No injuries to officers," spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said in a statement, adding that the incident was under investigation.

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Police later said the Israeli forces had approached Awwad's village Idna to take action against illegal copper smelting.

"A Palestinian car driven by the suspect tried to escape the security forces, the car hit the supervisor's car and headed toward a border police officer who was securing the event," a statement said.

"The officer fired at the car, hitting the man suspected of attempting to run him over," it added, confirming the driver had died.

Palestinians have carried out a series of attacks against Israelis in recent years in protest against the military’s continued occupation of the West Bank, where Israel has developed a network of settlements that now host around 400,000 Jewish settlers.

Palestinians say the settlement enterprise is intended to prevent the contiguity of any future sovereign state. Israel’s right-wing government and many nationalist Israelis believe the West Bank to be the biblical home of the Jewish people. Palestinians fear that Israel seeks to annex the entire West Bank and create a greater Israel.

KEY DATES IN AMAZON'S HISTORY

July 5, 1994: Jeff Bezos founds Cadabra Inc, which would later be renamed to Amazon.com, because his lawyer misheard the name as 'cadaver'. In its earliest days, the bookstore operated out of a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington

July 16, 1995: Amazon formally opens as an online bookseller. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought becomes the first item sold on Amazon

1997: Amazon goes public at $18 a share, which has grown about 1,000 per cent at present. Its highest closing price was $197.85 on June 27, 2024

1998: Amazon acquires IMDb, its first major acquisition. It also starts selling CDs and DVDs

2000: Amazon Marketplace opens, allowing people to sell items on the website

2002: Amazon forms what would become Amazon Web Services, opening the Amazon.com platform to all developers. The cloud unit would follow in 2006

2003: Amazon turns in an annual profit of $75 million, the first time it ended a year in the black

2005: Amazon Prime is introduced, its first-ever subscription service that offered US customers free two-day shipping for $79 a year

2006: Amazon Unbox is unveiled, the company's video service that would later morph into Amazon Instant Video and, ultimately, Amazon Video

2007: Amazon's first hardware product, the Kindle e-reader, is introduced; the Fire TV and Fire Phone would come in 2014. Grocery service Amazon Fresh is also started

2009: Amazon introduces Amazon Basics, its in-house label for a variety of products

2010: The foundations for Amazon Studios were laid. Its first original streaming content debuted in 2013

2011: The Amazon Appstore for Google's Android is launched. It is still unavailable on Apple's iOS

2014: The Amazon Echo is launched, a speaker that acts as a personal digital assistant powered by Alexa

2017: Amazon acquires Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, its biggest acquisition

2018: Amazon's market cap briefly crosses the $1 trillion mark, making it, at the time, only the third company to achieve that milestone

MATCH INFO

Uefa Champions League semi-final, second leg result:

Ajax 2-3 Tottenham

Tottenham advance on away goals rule after tie ends 3-3 on aggregate

Final: June 1, Madrid

Company Profile

Company name: Namara
Started: June 2022
Founder: Mohammed Alnamara
Based: Dubai
Sector: Microfinance
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Investment stage: Series A
Investors: Family offices

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Name: Yousef Al Bahar

Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994

Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers