GAZA CITY, November 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Two young Palestinians were killed and 15 others wounded Tuesday, November 5, when Israeli tanks opened fire on the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on the Egyptian border.

Adham Hamdan, 16, was killed immediately, while Iyad Tahar, aged around 20, died after an hour on life support, Ali Moussa, director of Rafah hospital, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Fifteen other people were wounded when the tanks fired shells and opened machine guns fire at the Palestinians.

Two of the injured were in critical condition, Moussa said.

The incident began when Palestinian youths threw stones at two Israeli tanks escorting an army bulldozer carrying out works on the Israeli-controlled border with Egypt, which bisects the impoverished town.

The tanks opened fire with machine guns, wounding seven people, including an eight-year-old boy hit in the chest and a woman shot in the leg.

The tanks opened fire again shortly afterwards, this time using shells, causing the fatality and serious injuries.

The Israeli army bulldozer demolished the houses of two brothers, Samih and Yusef, and blasted the house of a third brother, Kheiri, with a shell.

The houses were near the border zone, where Israeli troops and Palestinian resistance fighters often clash.

Israeli forces make frequent incursions into the edge of Rafah, which is home to several large refugee shanty towns, to destroy buildings which the Israelis claim are used as firing platforms or as by smugglers bringing weapons through tunnels from Egypt.

The deaths bring the toll of the 25-month Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli occupation of Palestine to 2,645 killed, including 1,957 Palestinians and 639 Israelis. The rest are foreigners.

Meanwhile, An Israeli army special unit abducted three "wanted" Palestinians in a village police station in the northern West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.

Two of the men abducted in the village of Arura, 12 kilometers (eight miles) north of Ramallah, were members of the security services while the third was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Palestinian security sources said.

The sources named just one of the trio -- intelligence officer, Abdel Salaam Shukri, a member of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

The Israeli army confirmed the arrests, saying it had detained three "terrorists", including the head of a local militant cell and his deputy.

All were militants linked to Fatah, the Israeli army claimed, without elaborating on what offences they were accused of.

On the political arena, Japanese Middle East envoy Tatsuo Arima met with Arafat in his West Bank headquarters Tuesday to discuss reforms inside the Palestinian Authority, officials here said.

"I had an important meeting with Mr Arafat. The Japanese government in very interested in the new Palestinian cabinet and is looking for real reform within the (Palestinian Authority)," he said after the hour-long meeting.

The Palestinians are due to hold presidential and legislative elections on January 20, some two weeks before Israel goes to the polls to elect a new Knesset.