Israel asked Egypt to meditate on the release of its soldiers and settlers being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Egyptian officials said.

A coalition of Palestinian resistance factions strongly condemns the use of attack dogs by female Israeli soldiers to force Palestinian women to strip naked during a raid in the West Bank in July.

The village of Ghajar was occupied by Israel in the war of July 2006. Some 2,000 people live there.

Masked extremist Israeli settlers have broken into a mosque in the occupied West Bank village of Urif, taking a copy of the Holy Quran and ripping the pages from it before throwing it into the street.

The Gaza-based Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance movements have roundly denounced the attacks.

Dozens of Israeli settlers have stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, after the regime’s forces staged a second attack against Palestinian worshipers.

Israeli forces have assaulted Palestinian prisoners in the Ramon prison and transferred dozens of them to an unknown location.