Israeli troops yesterday shot dead three Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, despite efforts on both sides to calm tensions. On Saturday an Israeli soldier was killed by Palestinian policemen.
Hospital sources in the Palestinian Authority said 31 Palestinians were wounded in clashes in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, four of them critically.
At the start of the weekend there had been signs of a tapering off in confrontations.
Following an order issued on Friday by the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, for militia gunmen to stop firing from areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under his full control, Palestinian policemen began taking measures to prevent shooting at Israeli targets.
The Israeli army reported five incidents of gunfire on Saturday night in Gaza compared with 15 to 20 on previous nights.
In another sign that efforts were being made to reduce the conflict, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, said yesterday Israel would not retaliate for the shooting of one of its soldiers, killed by a Palestinian policeman who infiltrated an Israeli army position in Gaza on Saturday and opened fire on troops guarding there.
An Israeli soldier, Baruch Snir Flum (21), died in the attack and two other soldiers were wounded. The attacker was shot dead when soldiers returned fire.
Palestinians reported that a 14year-old boy, Abdel Rahman al-Dahashan, was shot in the chest and killed by Israeli troops during a stone-throwing confrontation at the Karni commercial crossing between Gaza and Israel. The Israeli army denied having used live fire in the area.
Israeli soldiers killed Rasat Judeh (22) and wounded a second man during prolonged clashes in a suburb of the West Bank city of Nablus, hospital sources said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman and witnesses on the scene said the troops returned fire when Palestinian gunmen strafed an army post on the edge of Nablus.
In the third killing, the Israeli army said troops killed a "Palestinian terrorist" when gunmen opened fire on a bus near the West Bank town of Qalqilya. No one on the bus was hurt.
Israeli leaders remained sceptical about the possibility of a full truce, but Palestinian leaders insisted their security forces were striving to implement Mr Arafat's orders.
Some Israeli commentators suggested Mr Arafat's no-shoot order and the reduction in protests were in part the result of a growing fatigue among Palestinians.
Over 200 Palestinians, many of them children or teenagers, have been killed by Israeli troops, thousands have been injured and the Palestinian economy has been badly damaged, partly due to economic sanctions imposed by Mr Barak.
Meanwhile, in what appeared to be a spillover from the violent clashes in the occupied territories, Israel's vice-consul in Jordan, Mr Yoram Havivian, was lightly injured yesterday morning after a gunman in a passing car opened fire on him as he was leaving for work at the embassy in Amman.
Jordan and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1994 after signing a peace treaty, but Jordanians have become increasingly disenchanted with the agreement.
With Palestinians constituting the majority of Jordan's population, the clashes in the territories have spawned large demonstrations in Amman and calls for ties with Israel to be severed.