|
Friday Not Peaceful In Palestine
RAMALLAH, West Bank, April 6 (News Agencies) - Dozens of Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers across the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Friday, as Yasser Arafat urged the United Nations to step in to save his people.
Some 40 people were left with Israeli bullet wounds, two of them seriously injured after being hit by exploding ammunition, medical sources in the Palestinian territories said.
Less than 10 days after the U.S. veto of a draft U.N. resolution that would have dispatched an observer force to protect the Palestinians, Arafat asked U.N. chief Kofi Annan by telephone to "intervene to stop the Israeli aggression [against] the unarmed Palestinian people," a Palestinian official said.
Eighteen of those injured Friday were hit near the northern West Bank town of Ramallah when around 300 people clashed with troops at an Israeli army checkpoint that has seen violence flare frequently during the past six months.
Medical sources said they were all shot with rubber-coated metal bullets at the end of a march of more than 1,000 Palestinians from Ramallah after weekly Muslim prayers, adding that one other was suffering from tear gas exposure.
"On with the Intifada [uprising]," they shouted at the march, protesting against an Israeli-Palestinian security meeting held Wednesday night near Tel Aviv by burning a banner with "security cooperation" printed on it.
Close to 470 people, the vast majority of them Palestinian, have been killed since the uprising against Israeli occupation broke out late last September.
Two Israeli women were injured Friday, one of them seriously, when Palestinians threw stones at their car near the settlement of Beitar Elit near Bethlehem in the West Bank, military sources said.
In the Gaza Strip at the Karni border crossing with Israel, another frequent flashpoint, nine Palestinian boys were hit by live fire as stone-throwers clashed with troops stationed there.
Medical sources said two of them, aged 13 and 14, were in a serious condition in hospital after being shot in the stomach by exploding bullets a confrontation that continued into the evening.
At the nearby Erez crossing, Palestinians fired mortars at an Israeli position. Soldiers responded by firing on the area from where the shots came, military sources said.
Earlier, a Palestinian was shot in a separate incident that followed tit-for-tat attacks on a Jewish settlement and Palestinian security positions in the Gaza Strip overnight.
In Bethlehem, Palestinians opened fire on an Israeli checkpoint near the Jewish holy site of Rachel's Tomb, without causing injuries. In response, Israeli tanks fired seven shells toward the Aida and el-Aza refugee camps, injuring a Palestinian woman, witnesses said.
In a nearby clash, five were shot by Israeli troops who opened fire on around 70 Palestinian youths demonstrating after Friday prayers against "assassinations" of prominent Palestinians, medical sources and witnesses said.
The demonstrators protested the deaths of two activists of the Islamic Jihad movement in the past week, one killed when Israeli helicopters fired missiles at his car and the second blown up in a public telephone booth.
"We will escalate the clashes against the occupation in revenge for the assassinations," a Jihad official at the march told AFP.
Since the beginning of November, Israel has eliminated some 20 activists of Palestinian organizations it alleges organized anti-Israeli retaliatory attacks, according to the Palestinians.
Another seven Palestinian youths were shot in a clash with soldiers stationed at a checkpoint at the village of al-Khader near Bethlehem, one of them badly hurt by a live bullet, hospital sources told AFP.
Palestinian demonstrators meanwhile took to the streets of the divided southern West Bank town of Hebron, where around 400 hardline Jewish settlers live at the heart of the mainly Palestinian town of 120,000.
Around 700 people marched peacefully through the Arab neighborhood of Abu Sneinah, which came under repeated Israeli bombardment after a 10-month-old Israeli child was shot dead last month, witnesses said.
But in central Hebron, one Palestinian youth was wounded when around a dozen Palestinians threw rocks and petrol bombs (Molotov cocktails) at soldiers who responded with rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades, a medical source said.
On the outskirts of the northern West Bank town of Jenin, there was a short exchange of fire between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers after the funeral of Jihad activist Iyyad Hardan, killed in the telephone booth explosion on Thursday, witnesses said.
No injuries were reported.
Around 15,000 people had turned out for the funeral attended by Jihad activists before the family headed to Hardan's home village of Raba where they buried him, residents said.
|
