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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| IDF shutters 3 alleged West Bank gunsmithing operations |
| 2017-03-30 |
| [IsraelTimes] In crackdown on illegally manufactured weapons, army seizes machinery, gun parts in Hebron region; 6 Paleostinians placed in durance vile overnight. Israeli troops shut down three workshops believed to have been used to illegally manufacture guns in the Hebron region early Wednesday morning, as part of an ongoing crackdown on the weapons trade in the West Bank, the army said. In a joint operation by the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service, the soldiers confiscated equipment and gun parts from the workshops, before sealing off the doors, the army said. No arrests were made in connection with the alleged weapon manufacturing operations, an IDF spokesperson said. So far in 2017, the army has located and shuttered 12 such workshops and seized over 110 guns, the IDF said Wednesday. That figure puts the army on track to match, if not exceed, its efforts from the year before, in which forces shut down 43 alleged gunsmithing operations and confiscated over 450 weapons. For the past 15 months, the IDF has set its sights on the illegal gun market in the West Bank, focusing on its sources -- gun makers and sellers, rather than gun owners, for instance -- in an attempt to prevent terror attacks. The effort has not yet significantly curbed the number of shooting attacks perpetrated against Israeli civilians and soldiers, but has sent the prices of illegal guns skyrocketing. The cost of a homemade weapons tripled over the course of 2016, an intelligence officer in the army’s West Bank division told news hounds in January. Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli troops incarcerated Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! an alleged Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, operative and five Paleostinians suspected of taking part in so-called "popular terrorism," a catch-all term denoting rock throwing and participating in violent protests. The suspected Hamas member was arrested in Aqraba in the northern West Bank. Two of the alleged rock throwers were arrested in Usarin, south of Nablus; another two were arrested in Tuqua, in the central West Bank; and the fifth was arrested in Bethlehem, the army said. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |