Four Palestinians including a two-year-old girl have been killed in clashes in Gaza.
Palestinian sources said the toddler and one man were killed by Israeli tank fire and the second man died during a separate gun battle with Israeli troops. It was later reported a third man died.
An Israeli military source said a tank had fired a shell at three militants who had set off a roadside bomb. If a child had been killed it was the fault of "the terrorists who are using women and children as human shields," the source said.
The Israeli army said its forces pulled out of Palestinian-ruled areas of Hebron, where 400 Jewish settlers live among 120,000 Palestinians.
It said its troops arrested 150 Palestinians suspected of "terror activities," including 52 on its wanted list, and confiscated explosives, bombs and weapons caches.
In Bethlehem today, Israeli troops shot and wounded a Palestinian at the besieged Church of the Nativity as haggling over food supplies held up negotiations on ending a standoff at the shrine.
The Israeli army described the Palestinian as a gunman who was spotted in the courtyard of the church's Latin compound. He was hit in the shoulder, then surrendered along with another man, an army statement said. In other incidents around the site, Israeli soldiers fired in the air to scare of youths who threw stones at them. And a group of 20 Palestinian demonstrators, most of them women, marched up to the barricades erected around the church.
AFP and