Al-KHALIL (HEBRON), West Bank, January 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli troops and armored surged into Al-Khalil (Hebron) early Thursday, January 30, slapping a curfew on the West Bank city and carrying out house-to-house searches a day after a heavy machine-gun fire from an Israeli tank killed a Palestinian teenager in the Jabaliya refugee camp, just north of Gaza City, while 20 more were wounded in Rafah to the south.

Security officials said five Palestinians had been detained in Hebron and its surrounding villages as around 20 armored vehicles deployed in the centre of the city of more than 120,000 people, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

The Israeli troops had also shut down a television and two radio stations.

Around 600 hardliner settlers live under massive Israeli army protection in Hebron, surrounded by around 120,000 Palestinians.

In Gaza, a Palestinian teenager was killed Wednesday, January 29, by heavy machine-gun fire from an Israeli tank in the Jabaliya refugee camp, just north of Gaza City, while 17 more were wounded in Rafah to the south, Palestinian officials said.

Palestinian resistance fighter shot dead two Israeli soldiers posted at a Jewish settlement in the southern Gaza Strip, while three Jewish settlers were wounded in an ambush in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, informed source in the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas told IslamOnline Wednesday that members of Ezz El-Din El-Qassam Brigades launched a missile in the direction of an Israeli patrol near the Jewish settlement of Etsmona, north of Rafah, resulting in the death of two Israeli soldiers and injuring another.

An Israeli soldier was moderately wounded by gunfire while supervising works to repair a security fence at Rafiah Yam, Israeli military, medical and settler sources said.

The soldier was hit in the head, they added, saying he was flown to hospital by helicopter.

In the West Bank, two Jewish settlers were wounded when their car was ambushed by Palestinian gunmen near the Ofra settlement, five kilometers (three miles) northeast of Ramallah, Israeli medical and military sources said.

The slain youth was identified as Mahed Abu Dahruj, 19, hit in the head as army bulldozers were leveling land east of Jabaliya.

Palestinian officials said Israeli bulldozers and tanks flattened around 75 acres (30 hectares) of orchards and farm land near Jabaliya.

In Rafah on the Gaza Strip’s Israeli-controlled border with Egypt, 20 people were wounded Wednesday by Israeli fire, two of them critically, Palestinian officials said.

One of them was identified as 15-year-old Nidal Farahat who was hit in the abdomen as he approached a tank that was flanked by two armored vehicles and two bulldozers.

Other Palestinians, including a 50-year old man, his 10-year-old son and two teenagers were also moderately wounded in the incident, the sources added.