4 Palestinians Killed in Clashes

On this much the two sides agree: The downtown market in the West Bank town of Jenin was crowded Monday morning with Palestinians shopping for one of the Muslim year’s most festive holidays. Merchants had lain their wares on the cracked sidewalks. Veiled women and children running errands for their mothers were opening their coin purses for the ingredients of a holiday meal.

By midday, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy lay dead and more than a dozen other people, all but one Palestinian, had been injured in a wild, running battle. The Israelis said the incident was sparked by curfew-breakers hurling stones and gunmen firing on army troops, but Palestinians said it was an unprovoked outburst of Israeli firepower in a crowded urban setting.

It was a day of violence that also saw three other Palestinian deaths. One of those who died was a heavily armed man who tried to slip into a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip before dawn; another was an apparent bystander caught in cross-fire as Israeli troops hunted wanted militants in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm; and the third was a worker killed in a border industrial zone when Palestinian militants fired a mortar toward an Israeli military checkpoint in Gaza and missed.

Events in Jenin, a Palestinian town of about 50,000 people in the northern West Bank that Israeli authorities say has been the source of dozens of suicide attacks against Israelis, were a fresh reminder of how volatile a mix is created when ordinary Palestinians, weary of military curfews that keep them pinned inside their homes for days or weeks at a time, come into close contact with wary Israeli troops.

The army says troops near Jenin’s old city, attempting to enforce a widely violated military curfew, came under fire at mid-morning and that one Israeli soldier was slightly wounded.

At that point, the military spokesman’s office said, a Palestinian teenager tried to clamber atop an Israeli armored vehicle. In such a scenario, Israeli soldiers are instructed to respond with whatever force is necessary because troops can be trapped and incinerated if someone manages to hurl a firebomb into the vehicle’s tight confines.

Palestinian witnesses, however, said the boy, identified by hospital officials as Motez Odeh, was either trying to escape the oncoming Israeli armor, or was trying to keep an eye on his family’s sidewalk cigarette stand.

“He did not climb on top of anything!” said Ghareid Raja, 54, a witness. “He was trying to run away.”

The boy’s death provoked an outpouring of fury among the many Palestinians still out on the town’s streets, witnesses said. People hurled whatever was at hand -- stones, cans of paint, metal railings, garbage and garbage cans -- at patrolling Israeli vehicles, which continued on their way, festooned with debris.

Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, a time of prayer and daytime fasting, is to end Thursday night, ushering in the Eid al-Fitr, one of the most festive holidays of the Muslim year.

Jenin has been under intermittent curfew for months. The town and its refugee camp, scene of one of the fiercest battles during Israel’s wide-ranging April offensive throughout the West Bank, have been the focus of an intense Israeli manhunt for militants who have planned and carried out suicide attacks against Israeli cities and towns.

Not far away, in Tulkarm, witnesses described another gun battle that left a Palestinian bystander dead as Israeli troops were conducting a sweep for wanted militants. One of the 14 Palestinians that witnesses said were wounded was believed to be a man being pursued by the troops.

Another Palestinian, a worker in the Erez industrial zone sandwiched between the Gaza Strip and Israel proper, was killed when Palestinians fired a mortar, apparently aimed at an Israeli military checkpoint. It hit a crowd of workers instead.

At least nine Palestinians were reported hurt in the explosion. The militant group Islamic Jihad, for which Gaza is a stronghold, claimed responsibility.

The army said the Palestinian man shot dead as he tried to infiltrate the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, in the Gaza Strip, was armed with an assault rifle and several ammunition clips, and was wearing a bulletproof vest. They said the gunman was dressed in an Israeli army uniform when he stumbled onto an Israeli patrol. An Israeli soldier was wounded in the clash, the army said.