Israeli forces gun down three more Palestinian fighters

GAZA: Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday and the Israeli military claimed they were trying to plant explosives near a border fence when they were attacked.
The incident followed the killing a day earlier of three Gazans in an airstrike which the military said foiled their attempt to fire rockets from the central Gaza Strip into Israel.
Villagers who knew the men killed in yesterday’s attack said they belonged to a small group known as Homat Al-Aqsa. Their bodies were taken to a local hospital.
An Israeli military spokesman said the ambulances had arrived at the scene without prior coordination and were kept away for their own safety because troops were still in action.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians will seek to upgrade their status at the United Nations this month bolstered by the support of Arab countries, Islamic states and the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement, the Palestinian president said on Wednesday.
Previous Palestinian attempts to improve their formal status at the global body — a UN observer “entity” with no voting rights — have failed. The Palestinian foreign minister had earlier said they would ask to be made a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly later this month.
“I am going this month to the UN General Assembly in light of the latest decision in Doha, the Islamic summit and the Non-Aligned Movement summit,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters at the Arab League.
A Palestinian diplomat told Reuters that Abbas was referring to securing recognition as a nonmember observer state, a first stage toward recognition of a Palestinian state.