A Palestinian was seriously wounded by gunfire in the West Bank early today as Israeli troops arrested 10 people in the ongoing hunt for three teenagers believed kidnapped by Hamas.
And a Palestinian woman in her 60s died after suffering a heart attack when troops raided her home in a refugee camp near the hitchhiking post where the youths disappeared, medics said.
According to army figures, the latest arrests raised to 381 the total number detained in two weeks of searches for the teens who disappeared on June 12 while hitchhiking in the southern West Bank.
In Samuah village at the southernmost end of the West Bank, a 44-year-old man was seriously wounded by Israeli gunfire when he tried to bolt at the moment of arrest, Palestinian security sources said.
The Israeli army confirmed the incident.
"He was transferred for treatment in an Israeli hospital," an army spokeswoman told AFP, adding that he was affiliated to Hamas.
Elsewhere, a 65-year-old woman suffered a heart attack after troops burst into her home in Arrub refugee camp just south of the Etzion settlement bloc and a few kilometres from the place where the teens were last seen.
She was rushed to hospital but later died, hospital sources said.
There has been no sign of the missing youths and no claim of responsibility for their suspected abduction, despite a fortnight of intensive searches.
Late yesterday, Israel's security cabinet decided to continue its "massive operations," the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, referring to the army's biggest deployment in the West Bank in nearly a decade.
Troops have killed five Palestinians and injured dozens more during the course of the campaign, which is known as Operation Brother's Keeper.
