Israeli Troops Kill 3 More Palestinians : Boy, 13, and Girl, 17, Among Latest Victims; Toll at 14 in 5 Days

Israeli troops killed three Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip today--including a 13-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl--as stone-throwing demonstrators defied the army.

The deaths brought to 14 the number of Palestinians killed in the last five days.

Soldiers shot to death Rufida Abu Laban, 17, of the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank, at a funeral for a teen-age boy shot the previous day, Palestinians said. It was the third death in the camp in as many days.

Hospital officials confirmed the girl died from a gunshot wound to the head.

Meanwhile, a Jabalya refugee camp resident died of complications from paralysis after entering Mokassed Hospital two weeks ago with severe head and neck trauma from an army beating, an army spokesman said.

Sons of 56-year-old Fares Mohamed Salah in Jabalya said soldiers who had been chasing stone-throwers savagely beat their father on the stairs to their basement last March 27 and then left him there unconscious.

A protest broke out near the camp, which was under curfew, when the body was brought and prepared for burial. Troops shot Kaed Mousa Salameh, 13, in the ensuing clash. He died later of blood loss and was buried before Salah.

Angered Jabalya residents broke curfew and marched through the streets of the sprawling camp carrying flags and shouting nationalist slogans, witnesses said.

Troops shot tear gas and bullets to disperse them, wounding at least three protesters, hospitals reported.

In other clashes with demonstrators in the Gaza Strip, troops shot and wounded five Palestinians in Abasan and Beit Hanoun villages.

The army lifted most curfews in the Gaza Strip that it held on all 650,000 residents on Sunday to stem violence on a Palestinian “day of rage” marking the year since the killing of PLO leader Khalil Wazir.

Israeli commandos are widely believed to have shot Wazir, known as Abu Jihad, in his Tunis home. Israel had held that the Palestine Liberation Organization military chief was the mastermind behind the uprising.