Israel's military today killed eight Palestinians, including three security force members, during a third straight day of incursions in the West Bank after the assassination of a cabinet minister.
Violent clashes engulfed Bethlehem where four Palestinians were killed from Israeli fire, after three people were killed yesterday when tanks first raided the self-rule Palestinian city and the famed birthplace of Jesus Christ.
Israeli gunfire killed 19-year-old Johnny Thalgia, near the Church of the Nativity late this afternoon.
A spray of bullets killed 48-year-old woman, Aysha Abu Uda, at her home in the Ayda refugee camp on the northern outskirts of Bethlehem, hospital sources said.
Israeli tank fire also killed 17-year-old Yusef Abayat in the southeastern part of town, witnesses said.
An Israeli army statement said Abayat had approached an Israeli outpost and stabbed an Israeli soldier, wounding him lightly, before the tank fired.
Rania Kharufa, 23, was killed by shrapnel from a tank shell which exploded near her house in neighbouring Beit Jala, the sources said.
Thirteen other Palestinians, including three policemen and a doctor, were injured in the area, the sources said.
The West Bank exploded in violence last Wednesday after the assassination of Israeli tourism minister Revahem Zeevi in an east Jerusalem hotel by a radical Palestinian group.
A Palestinian Health Ministry statement said that through the morning, 14 people had been killed, 184 injured, eight of them seriously, since Israel mounted its revenge strikes nearly three days ago.
Israeli troops also killed two members of the Palestinian security forces today in the autonomous Palestinian town of Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources said.
They were named as Mustapha Zetani, 53 and Maher Abu Hassan, 33.
The pair were killed during a heavy exchange of fire between Israeli and Palestinian forces, according to the sources, as Israeli armour rolled into the town.
Another member of the security forces was said to have been seriously injured in the exchange. An army spokesman said two Israeli soldiers were also injured in the clashes.
Meanwhile a 37-year-old Palestinian civilian and a 20-year-old Palestinian policemen, Samir Shawahida, were killed as more troops penetrated Qalqiliya, another Palestinian-controlled town in the northern West Bank.
The troops also arrested seven people, including two members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17 bodyguard corps, the sources said.
The Israeli fire left three other Palestinians wounded, and a Palestinian security position destroyed, they added.
Elsewhere, Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian security officer in the head during an exchange of fire in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which Israeli troops had entered Thursday, hospital sources said.
They listed him in critical condition.
The latest killings brought the overall toll for the year-old intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, to 899 dead, including 699 Palestinians and 178 Israelis.
AFP