Israeli soldiers walk during clashes with Palestinians in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank December 10, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman
December 10, 2018
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli soldiers raided the offices of Palestinian news agency Wafa on Monday in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, it said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the report. It was unclear whether the raid was connected with an army search in Ramallah after a gunman believed to be Palestinian opened fire on Israelis outside a nearby Jewish settlement on Sunday.
“They (the soldiers) raided the server room in the bureau and went through the camera recordings in the agency,” Wafa said on its website. “They withdrew from the agency’s office after they took copies of the security camera footage.”
Mobile phone video footage posted on the agency’s website showed five soldiers inside what appeared to be the Wafa newsroom, instructing employees to open one of the rooms in the office as another person is heard saying “the cameras are in there.”
On Sunday, a Palestinian opened fire at a group of Israelis standing at a bus stop next to a Jewish settlement near Ramallah, wounding six people, one – a pregnant woman – critically, in a drive-by shooting.
The Israeli military said the vehicle had Palestinian number plates and that its forces had mounted “extensive searches in the villages in the area as part of the hunt for the terrorists who committed the attack”.
Israeli soldiers were also seen operating inside Ramallah on Monday, requesting businesses hand over security camera footage. Clashes broke out in some areas between troops and Palestinians.
(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Suheir Sheikh and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; editing by John Stonestreet)
