Israeli soldiers shot and wounded two protesters trying to breach a controversial barrier Israel is building in the West Bank today.
Israeli military sources, confirming two people were wounded, said soldiers opened fire after several protesters became violent and tried to cut through the barrier outside the Palestinian village of Mascha near Qalqilya.
It appeared to be the first time the army had fired live ammunition at Israeli protesters trying to damage the barrier of razor-wire fences, concrete walls and trenches that Israel claims it needs to stop infiltrations by Palestinian suicide bombers.
Palestinians say the barrier is a land grab in the West Bank from a state they seek to establish. A US-backed "road map" peace plan that both sides endorsed calls for a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
"We began cutting the fence and shaking it. The Israeli army was waiting for us and shot live bullets directly at us," Liad Kantorowicz, one of the Israeli protesters who described themselves as anarchists, told journalists.
Kantorowicz said the Israeli man, from a kibbutz (collective farm), took a bullet in his knee and was undergoing surgery. She said an unidentified foreign protester was shot in the shoulder.
An Israeli military source said the soldiers operated according to procedure after they called on protesters to move away from the fence and fired warning shots into the air.
"Anyone who attacks the security fence is considered suspicious, and this behaviour is a (legitimate) reason for soldiers to begin conducting arrest procedures...It doesn't matter who the person is," the source told Reuters.
Israelis have overwhelmingly supported a "separation fence" as protection against Palestinian militant attacks, but the barrier's route as decreed by the governing right-wing coalition has been widely condemned abroad.
Several recent protests by peace activists against tough Israeli security measures in the West Bank and Gaza, where Palestinians launched an uprising in 2000, have led to violence.