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Five Palestinians Die as Anti-U.S. Demonstration Erupts Into Gun Battle
GAZA CITY, Oct 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Two Palestinian civilians and one Palestinian police officer were shot dead Monday as student protests against U.S. strikes in Afghanistan degenerated into gun battles with Palestinian police near Gaza City's universities, as two other Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops in separate incidents in the Gaza Strip earlier Monday, before the violent protests erupted.
The explosion of violence, pitting Palestinians against their own security forces, came as Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority tried to keep its distance from an unwanted new champion, Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
The two Palestinians, a 13-year-old boy and 21-year-old student Anwar Akel, were cut down by gunfire as masked men hiding among the crowd of hundreds of protesting students pushed back into the university compound fired on police. Police said it was the gunmen who killed the two.
A Palestinian officer was also reported to be clinically dead.
A bullet to the head seriously wounded the officer as officers struggled to confine hundreds of stone- and bottle-throwing students from the Islamic university enraged by Washington's attack on bin Laden's bases in Afghanistan.
Ten other officers and 30 civilians were injured in the clashes, while 30 other people were hurt, either by bullets, stones, police beatings or tear gas inhalation.
Masked gunmen shot at police with Kalashnikov assault rifles, sparking heated exchanges of fire in the streets as the violence spilled over from the confines of the university area in the heart of Gaza City.
Police ordered the city's Islamic and Al-Azhar universities to be closed until further notice.
The rioting started as police tried to shut down what they termed an "illegal" demonstration by students of the Islamic university.
As the students were pushed back into the university compounds, police sealed off the area but came under a hail of stones and bottles.
They fired warning shots but members of the crowd, hiding their faces with masks, then opened fire with assault rifles.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority tried to distance itself from comments made in the name of the Palestinian people by bin Laden, who said the United States would have no security until the Palestinians also enjoyed safety.
Information minister Yasser Abbed Rabbo said that while bin Laden's observations on the unrest in Palestinian areas were correct, "we don't want terrorist acts and crimes in the name of Palestine."
"We have killing every day, but that is no excuse to anyone to kill and carry out terrorist acts, like what happened in New York and Washington," he said on Voice of Palestine radio.
But hardline religious groups slammed the U.S. strikes, which Hamas official Ismael Hania called "a consecration of an international policy of terrorism."
"We condemn the U.S. aggression against the Afghan nation and we see this aggression as the consecration of an international policy of terrorism," said Hania.
He said the "international terrorist policy led by the United States... aims at very weak and poor countries, killing Muslims, and will spread to other Muslim and Arab countries."
A senior Palestinian official earlier said orders had been issued to stop foreign film crews from carrying out interviews with Palestinians to avoid possible bad publicity in the wake of U.S. attacks on Afghanistan.
"There is an order to ban these interviews because we are in an emergency situation," said the official, who asked not to be named. "We don't want anything to harm our image."
The Palestinians' international image suffered a painful blow when film crews recorded some Palestinians celebrating the hijack attacks which killed thousands in New York and Washington.
U.S. media pounced on the images, replaying them in the days after the attacks, although critics accused the media of downplaying reports of Palestinians showing support for the American victims, holding rallies and blood drives.
The isolated celebratory rallies misrepresented the true feelings of the Palestinian people as a whole, Palestinian authorities said in a report in the Israeli daily
Ha'aretz.
Palestinian police were seen preventing a film crew trying to interview Palestinians on the streets of Ramallah in the West Bank, while police in Gaza City also tried to stop cameramen from filming the riots.
Before the attacks, anti-American sentiment was rising among Palestinians, who saw U.S. President George W. Bush's distance from the yearlong crisis as a green light for Israel's strong-arm response in the Palestinian territories.
The Washington Post reported the protests as a combination of spontaneous fury at the United States for attacking a fellow Muslim nation, and support for bin Laden, a sudden patron of the Palestinian cause.
"It is the duty of every Palestinian to support bin Laden because he's backing our cause," said a 22-year-old art student at al-Najjah University in the West Bank city of Nablus, who gave his name only as Qusai. "Whoever supports us is our friend," said the paper.
Other Palestinians said they were embarrassed to be associated with bin Laden, and they rejected the airplane attacks in America as an anti-Islamic act and a terrorist atrocity. Still, even they were receptive to his embrace of the Palestinian cause.
"We don't support bin Laden for his attacks on America," said a 22-year-old pharmacology student at al-Najjah who gave his name as Ahmad. "But if his ideas [in support of the Palestinians] spread throughout the Muslim world, it can do something."
Some analysts said the rioting could mean the end of the yearlong Palestinian uprising, as Palestinians were now fighting each other rather than the Israelis. Others said the uprising would continue, but that Arafat's leadership - already facing severe challenge from Islamic opposition groups and others - would be shakier than ever, the
Post said.
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