Two Palestinians have been killed in the northern West Bank by Israeli troops who have swamped most of the territory, despite the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
In the village of Tel, near Nablus, Ahmed Ramadan, 32, was killed and a passenger was wounded when troops fired on a car travelling to a mosque for the first Friday prayers of the holy month, witnesses said. They were violating a curfew imposed by the Israeli military, they added.
"The troops fired directly on the vehicle without warning," Tel mayor Adnan Aseifeh told journalists. The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the incident. Israeli troops, whose re-occupation is aimed at cracking down on armed Palestinian groups, killed an alleged militant in the nearby Tulkarem refugee camp overnight as they were trying to arrest him, an Israeli army spokesman said.
Radi Balawni, 25, was a member of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction and had been wanted for anti-Israeli attacks, he said.
"He fled as the soldiers tried to arrest him and they opened fire," he added.
Another Palestinian was wounded in the shooting. The deaths bring to 2,652 the number of people killed since the Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000, including 1,962 Palestinianss and 641 Israelis.
In Jerusalem, meanwhile, some 150,000 Muslims gathered at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in the annexed eastern part of the city for the Ramadan prayers, an Israeli police spokesman said, adding the situation had been "very quiet".
More than 2,000 police were deployed throughout the city to prevent violence, the spokesman said, adding that the usual age restrictions on male worshippers had been lifted for the special prayers. Since the start of the Palestinian uprising, Israel has often prohibited men under the age of 40 from entering the compound, Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
The site is also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount. A police statement said additional checkpoints would be set up throughout the city.
AFP