Israeli Soldiers Kill More Arab Children, Group Says : Mideast: The military attributes increase to general rise in unrest, particularly in Gaza Strip.

Palestinian children are being killed at an increasing rate by Israeli soldiers as they attempt to quell protests in the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank, a leading Israeli human rights group warned Tuesday.

Appealing to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to restrain Israeli troops, the human rights group B’Tselem said that 34 children under 16 years old, a third of them no older than 12, have been killed in the last six months. One more, an 11-year-old shot in the head Sunday, died after the report was compiled.

Palestinian children are being killed in unprecedented numbers, B’Tselem said after analyzing current casualties. The group noted that they constituted nearly a third of all those killed in recent months in the intifada , the five-year Palestinian rebellion against the Israeli occupation.

Although the Israel Defense Forces had no immediate comment on B’Tselem’s report, a senior officer acknowledged: “Every (fatal) incident, especially when it involves children, is tragic. To our sorrow, there are situations in which children get killed.”

He attributed the sharp increase in children’s deaths in the last six months to a general rise in unrest, particularly in the Gaza Strip, and to Israeli efforts to retain control in the occupied territories in the face of increased Islamic militancy.

On Tuesday, five more Palestinians died in the strife-torn Gaza Strip, according to local journalists. In the heaviest fighting, three men were fatally shot and 35 others wounded near the Jabaliya refugee camp, according to Palestinian journalists there, when about 3,000 supporters of the outlawed Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, gathered for a memorial service for six guerrillas killed earlier this month.

Israeli troops surrounded the crowd, the journalists said, and opened fire when mourners tried to flee. A military spokesman confirmed that there had been a clash in Jabaliya but said the army had a report of only one dead there.

In southern Lebanon on Tuesday, an Israeli paratroop officer was killed when his patrol skirmished with guerrillas belonging to Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian Party of God militia, along the eastern edge of Israel’s self-proclaimed “security zone” in the region.

The clash set off a heavy exchange of artillery, mortar and rocket fire that lasted more than four hours, according to U.N. observers in the area, and Israeli helicopter gunships strafed local villages in an attempt to drive the Hezbollah guerrillas into the open.

An army spokesman said the clash took place near the village of Sujud, about 10 miles north of the Israeli border and close to the edge of the 440-square-mile region Israel set up in 1985 to prevent guerrillas from crossing the border or shelling its northern settlements. The zone is usually patrolled by about 1,500 Israeli soldiers and 3,000 allied Lebanese militiamen.

B’Tselem’s report was prompted by the shooting of a 20-month-old toddler in Jabaliya refugee camp by an Israeli officer Sunday as the child’s father attempted to shelter him at a tire repair shop in the midst of an anti-Israeli riot there.

“The death of the toddler, Fares Mohammed al Kurdi, is not out of the ordinary,” B’Tselem commented after providing statements by witnesses who accused the unit commander of recklessly firing at the boy and his father. “It constitutes a continuation of the rise in the number of Palestinians killed by security forces in general and the number of children killed in particular.”

Noting that military police are investigating the death, a senior army officer called it a tragedy but added, “In a densely populated area, even when regulations are followed, such things can happen.”