Israel seizes Palestinian parliament speaker

? Israeli forces arrested the speaker of the Palestinian parliament early today in the West Bank, adding to the more than two dozen members of the Hamas government in custody.

Israeli vehicles surrounded the Ramallah home of Abdel Aziz Duaik and took him in for questioning, an army spokesman said.

Israeli forces began rounding up members of the Hamas government in late June, shortly after Palestinian militant groups staged a cross-border ambush outside the Gaza Strip that killed two Israeli soldiers and captured a third.

Israeli forces responded with a series of airstrikes, tank offensives and nightly artillery bombardments in Gaza that the United Nations estimates have killed more than 170 Palestinians. They also conducted a mass roundup of Hamas officials on the West Bank.