GAZA, Oct 18: Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinians in fighting on Saturday in the occupied territories, including a senior member of the Hamas militant group, a woman bystander and a teenager, medics said.

The deaths stoked tension already fuelled by the killing of three American security guards in a bomb attack on a US diplomatic convoy in Gaza on Wednesday and highlighted the persistent violence bogging down US-led peace efforts.

In the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses said troops shot dead Tareq Abu al-Hussain, 39, a local leader of Hamas’ military wing, in a clash which broke out at Brazil refugee camp when militants attacked soldiers who entered the camp three days ago.

Another Hamas militant was killed in the Gaza shootings in the southern Rafah district and a woman, 30, was killed by shrapnel from a tank shell as she emerged from her house.

Thousands of angry Palestinians attended a funeral for the three killed in Rafah on Saturday afternoon, where witnesses said militants fired guns into the air and chanted:

“Our reaction will make Tel Aviv shudder...All our bodies are ticking bombs.”

Hamas’ military wing also vowed revenge in a statement faxed to Reuters.

In a separate clash on Saturday, soldiers shot dead a 16-year-old boy during a confrontation in the West Bank city of Tulkarm and wounded four other boys aged 10 to 12, medics said.

Palestinian witnesses said the troops opened fire on stone-throwers. An Israeli military source said the soldiers had opened fire in response to shooting and the hurling of firebombs at them in Tulkarm and that one of the gunmen was hit.

Later on Saturday an Israeli was slightly wounded by gunfire aimed at a vehicle headed down a road north of Tulkarm, a military source said.

A spokesman for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the

West Bank town of Jenin, a group with links to President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the shooting in a telephone call to Reuters.

HOUSES DESTROYED: In Gaza, a military source said, soldiers had opened fire on several armed men spotted laying an explosive in the Rafah area where Israeli soldiers have been searching for the past week for tunnels used to smuggle weapons in from Egypt.