BIDDO, Feb 26: Israeli forces killed two Palestinians protesting against Israel's West Bank barrier on Thursday. Witnesses in the West Bank village of Biddo said Israeli forces opened fire in a confrontation with stone-throwers, killing two Palestinians.
-Reuters
Israelis kill 2 Palestinians in demo against fence: 3 die in Gaza shootout
BIDDO, Feb 26: Two Palestinians protesting the building of the controversial barrier with the West Bank were shot and killed by Israeli troops here on Thursday, just hours after two Palestinians killed an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip before being shot dead themselves.
Palestinian medics said the two Palestinians, named as Mohammed Rayan, 25 and Zakaria Eid, 28, were killed when clashes erupted between protestors and Israeli soldiers in the village of Biddo, northwest of Al Quds.
Some 2,000 people, including stone-throwing young people, participated in the protest, which was violently dispersed by soldiers and border police, witnesses said.
Protests have been held across the West Bank this week to coincide with hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague on whether the barrier is legal under international law.
While there have been other incidents of violence, it is the first time people have been killed at any of the protests. A spokesman for the Red Crescent said five other demonstrators were wounded by live fire, 21 by rubber-coated bullets - most of them in their faces - and about 60 others had difficulty breathing after inhaling teargas.
The Israeli group Rabbi For Human Rights said two Israelis were among the wounded protestors. One was hit by a rubber bullet in his stomach and a woman was beaten unconscious by police, it said.
The Biddo demonstration was the third in the area where Palestinians are trying to prevent the start of a new 42-kilometre section of the barrier which also cuts through the neighbouring village of Beit Surik.
Israel insists that its "anti-terror fence" - a montage of razor wire, trenches, iron fencing and cement walls that juts deep into Palestinian territory - is intended to prevent infiltrations by Palestinian attackers.
The Palestinians see it as a land-grab aimed at preempting the borders of their promised state. The ICJ, whose three-day hearing on the barrier's legality ended on Wednesday, will give its advisory opinion within weeks or even months, should it decide it is competent to rule on such an issue.
Israel argues it is not and boycotted the hearings. Earlier on Thursday, two Palestinians killed a soldier at the main Erez crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, an Israeli army statement said. Other soldiers then shot the gunmen dead.
The army said several soldiers were patrolling the area "due to intelligence alerts" when they came across "two gunmen armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and hand grenades ... who opened fire towards them, resulting in the death of the soldier."
The attack was claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot loosely affiliated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, in an announcement made over a loudspeaker in the nearby Gaza Strip town of Jabaliah. -AFP
