Israelis Kill 3 Arab Guerrillas Near Lebanon Border

Israeli troops on Wednesday killed three Arab guerrillas trying to enter Israel from Lebanon on what the army said was a hostage-taking mission.

Meanwhile, in violence on the West Bank, a 70-year-old Palestinian woman was suffocated by tear gas that soldiers tossed into her home, according to a U.N. official. The Israeli army denied Arab accounts that the woman suffocated from the gas and said she died of natural causes.

In the Gaza Strip, two Palestinians were reported wounded by gunfire and 51 were injured by rubber bullets, tear gas and beatings in a battle between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.

Soldiers on patrol in south Lebanon, where Israel maintains a “security zone” just north of the frontier, surprised three guerrillas before dawn in brush about 100 yards from the border fence near a collective farm, the army said.

“We surrounded the terrorists from all sides,” the Israeli news agency Itim quoted one soldier as saying. “They tried to flee and we fired on them. They were killed on the spot.”

An army statement said the Arabs were on a hostage-taking mission, armed with M-16 rifles, hand grenades and four rockets. It was the second attempt to infiltrate the area in nine days.

In Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, soldiers fired on protesters outside a school, hitting two teen-agers in the legs, U.N. workers and hospital officials said.

Officials at a U.N. clinic and a doctor at Shifa Hospital, where some were treated, said 51 others in the camp were injured by rubber bullets, tear gas and beatings.

It was the second day of clashes in Gaza between soldiers and Arabs protesting the deportation of eight Palestinians to Lebanon on Monday.