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Israeli Troops Kill Palestinian Boy as Army Moves Into Hebron
NABLUS, West Bank, Aug 23 (News Agencies) - Israeli troops shot dead an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, while its army moved into Hebron on Thursday.
Mohammad Jaber Zorob was shot in the heart by Israeli troops, who also injured 10 other people when they opened fire on a crowd of youths who had been throwing stones at an Israeli army position, his family and Palestinian hospital sources said.
Medical officials said two of the injured were in a serious condition.
The shooting erupted when a crowd of young people demonstrated at the Khan Yunis refugee camp, close to an Israeli army post, following the funeral of a Palestinian policeman shot dead by Israeli forces in Rafah on Wednesday.
Zorob's killing brought the death toll in 11 months of conflict in the region to 734, including 566 Palestinians and 146 Israelis.
Meanwhile, Israel's army moved into the autonomous Palestinian sector of the divided West Bank city of Hebron Thursday night, Palestinian witnesses said, after a gun battle that left eight people injured.
Sustained gunfire could be heard in the Palestinian district of Abu Snena, which includes within its borders a Jewish settlement, witnesses said.
Six Palestinians were injured hours earlier in clashes with Israeli forces after a 10-year-old Israeli boy was shot in the stomach and his soldier brother wounded.
The brothers were on a rooftop in the Jewish settlement in the center of Hebron when they were shot, Hebron settler spokesman Noam Aaron said on public television.
The six Palestinians were shot by Israeli soldiers, with two of them seriously injured, in the gun battle that ensued, Palestinian hospital sources said.
Palestinian security sources said Israeli forces had opened fire with heavy machine-guns aimed at Palestinian areas.
Aaron had requested the Israeli army respond forcefully to the fighting in the Jewish areas. Hebron's 450 settlers have long wanted the Israeli army to seize the city's Palestinian autonomous zone, where nearly 120,000 Palestinians live.
Separately, hospital sources said a 65-year-old Palestinian, Nihat Jaber, died from a heart attack Thursday night after the Israeli army blocked ambulances from evacuating him, enforcing the Israeli curfew imposed on Hebron.
The Israeli army pulled out of 80% of Hebron in 1997, but continues to occupy the area in the center, around the Jewish settlement.
In the two days since Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres agreed to hold talks on implementing a ceasefire, seven Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military.
Israeli forces botched their second attempt to kill a suspected Palestinian activist in less than 24 hours Thursday, firing rockets at Palestinian police colonel Jihad Al-Masimi in the West Bank town of Nablus, slightly wounding the officer, his driver and a bystander.
A senior foreign ministry official, Oded Iran, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Masimi was the target of the army strike because he was allegedly involved in several "terror" activities in the Nablus area and was supposedly planning further attacks against Israeli targets.
The Nablus attack came less than 24 hours after Israeli helicopters in the Gaza Strip fired missiles at a convoy of cars carrying Adnan al-Ghul, high on Israel's most-wanted list as a master bombmaker for the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas.
The raid failed, with Israel instead killing his son, Bilal, who belonged to the Popular Resistance Committee, which coordinates the armed activities of diverse occupation resistance groups.
Thousands turned out for Ghul's funeral in Gaza City Thursday.
In other violence in the Gaza Strip Thursday, Israeli tanks and heavily armored jeeps rolled into the Palestinian-controlled refugee camp of Deir Al Balah, setting off an intense gunfight with scores of Palestinians.
Eight Palestinian policemen were injured during the incursion, which Israeli sources said was provoked by Palestinian mortar fire on Jewish settlements in the same area. Reports state that the mortar shells failed to hit their targets and caused no injuries.
In a separate incident in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian man suspected of having collaborated with Israeli security forces was found shot dead in a field near Tulkarem, local villagers said.
Despite the seemingly endless escalation of the conflict, Peres said while on a trip to Poland that he was hopeful ceasefire talks orchestrated by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer could take place next week.
A top aide to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on German radio that it was possible to create a situation "whereby neither side has to give up its ultimate dreams, but still could, de facto, live alongside the other."
But Arafat, heading to China via India and Pakistan, said he doubted Peres had the political authority to reach a lasting deal to end the violence.
He said the real power was in the hands of Sharon, who favors the hunt-and-kill policy that Palestinians and much of the international community say is assassination.
While on a whistle-stop tour of Asia, Arafat received support from Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after meeting with them.
In Jordan, Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb said King Abdullah II would urge Russia to play a move active role in the Middle East during a visit to Moscow next week.
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