Mon Apr 14, 3:12 AM ET

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HEBRON, West Bank (AFP) - Israeli troops blew up overnight the house of a Palestinian militant who had committed an attack in Israel and captured 11 Palestinians elsewhere in the West Bank, sources from both sides said.

AFP Photo

The 11 prisoners included five members of the radical Islamic group Hamas who lived near this West Bank town, an Israeli army spokesman said.

Meanwhile, soldiers demolished the two-storey home that had housed 15 relatives of Jamal Rajoub in the southern West Bank village of Doura, Palestinian witnesses said.

Rajoub, a member of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s Fatah (news - web sites) movement, was arrested in March 2002 after firing his automatic weapon into a municipal hall in the southern Israeli town of Ashdod.

Since August of last year, the Israeli army has blown up almost 200 homes belonging to Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks against Israel or against Israeli settlers or soldiers in the occupied territories.

Humanitarian groups denounce the practice of home destruction, which Israel says is aimed at dissuading such attacks, charging they constitute illegal collective punishment.

The army has also destroyed hundreds of houses alleged to have been built without permits or for "security reasons", mainly in the southern Gaza sector of Rafah.

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