Petah Tikva is using DNA analysis of dog droppings to reward and punish pet owners.

Under a six-month trial program launched this week, the Tel Aviv suburb is asking dog owners to take their animal to a municipal veterinarian, who then swabs its mouth and collects DNA.

The city will use the DNA database it is building to match feces to a registered dog and identify its owner.

Owners who scoop up their dogs’ droppings and place them in specially marked bins on Petah Tikva’s streets will be eligible for rewards of pet food coupons and dog toys.

But droppings found underfoot in the street and matched through the DNA database to a registered pet could earn its owner a municipal fine.

“My goal is to get the residents involved, and tell them that together, we can make our environment clean,” said Tika Bar-On, the city’s chief veterinarian who came up with the idea for the DNA experiment.

Bar-On said the DNA database could also help veterinarians research genetic diseases in dogs, investigate canine pedigree and identify stray animals, replacing the need for electronic chip identification.

“The sky is the limit on how far we can take this,” she said.

So far, Bar-On said, residents have “reacted positively to the program and are cooperating because they want their neighbourhood to be clean”.

She said Petah Tikva would consider making it mandatory for pet owners to provide DNA samples from their dogs if the trial program is successful.

Update: Kind of on topic.

Twelve people, including a police officer and a young girl, were killed in clashes between de facto government security forces and members of the Dughmush clan in Gaza on Tuesday morning.

A fierce gunbattle broke out after security forces attempted to arrest three members of the family. Medical sources said that 12 people were killed, contradicing an earlier report from the police that only four were killed.

Islam Shahwan, spokesperson of the security forces in Gaza, said “The security campaign operated in the As-Sabra neighborhood in Gaza City caused death of three wanted persons from the Dughmush family in addition to a policeman and a number of injuries.”

Shahwan said that the “wanted” individuals first refused to surrender. After this refusal, police stormed the hiding place. The aim had been to arrest the three.

Sources from police department confirmed that Jamil, Ibrahim and Sa’eb Doghmush were killed during the raid.

Twenty-two-year-old Sameh Mahmoud An-Naji, a member of the security forces, was killed, and an unknown number of others were injured.

Members of the Doghmush were reported to have been responsible for the kidnapping of BBC reporter Alan Johnston in 2007.

Meanwhile, amidst the carnage, we have some aspiring Oscar Wilde wannabes.

Eyewitnesses said that they saw body of a few months year old girl in Ash-Shifa hospital in Gaza who appeared to have “lost her head.”

Cue laughter.

Update: Their Lebanese brethren are not to be upstaged.

Three Palestinians were killed in fighting between rival factions in a refugee camp in south Lebanon, security sources said on Tuesday. The clashes began late on Monday when gunmen shot dead a member of the Islamist Jund al-Sham militant group in Ain al-Hilweh camp, 35 kilometres south of the capital Beirut.

The killing triggered fierce exchanges of gunfire and grenades between the militants and Fatah gunmen in which a second Jund al-Sham member was killed.

Several hours after the fighting stopped, the father of a senior Fatah official was shot dead by unknown attackers.