May 28, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25,1424

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NABLUS, May 27: Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the northern West Bank refugee camp of Tulkarem on Tuesday, Palestinian medical sources said.

Mohammed Amin Mahmud, 16, was shot in the chest when Israeli soldiers opened fire on a group of young stone-throwers during an incursion into the camp, the sources said.

A seven-year-old boy was also wounded and several other Palestinians were rounded up, they added.

A similar incident in the village of Beit Furik, east of Nablus, left three other Palestinian youths wounded, one of them critically, the same sources said.

The stone-throwers were pelting a bulldozer positioning a block on the road linking the village to Nablus, the sources said.

Palestinian medical sources said a Palestinian teenager critically wounded by Israeli troops last week near the northern town of Jenin died of his wounds on Tuesday.

Kamal Nawahda, 14, was shot in the head as soldiers fired at a group of stone-throwers during an incursion into Yammun village on May 22.

Further south, troops arrested two wanted Palestinians from the radical Islamic group Hamas, an army spokesman said.

Nadar Fakhan was arrested near the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem on suspicion of planning a suicide bombing, he said. The second man was arrested in Abu Dis, a suburb in the eastern sector of occupied Al Quds.

Earlier, two home-made Qassam rockets were fired from Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on the nearby Israeli town of Sderot, causing no casualties, military sources said.

Hamas’ armed wing, Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack.

A statement said it fired eight Qassam rockets and that the attack was “a message to the criminal Zionist government that the occupation of Beit Hanun will not prevent us from continuing our jihad”, or holy war.

The army has reoccupied the northern Gaza town since May 15 to dismantle radical groups and prevent rocket attacks on army posts and Jewish settlements.

—AFP