GAZA, Nov 7: Israeli troops killed a 10-year-old Palestinian boy and three militants in the Gaza Strip on Friday, but eased a West Bank blockade to try to bolster Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei and encourage peace moves.

Palestinians said the removal of the Ein Arik checkpoint, linking several Palestinian villages to the city of Ramallah, was the first real sign that Israel was implementing a pledge it

made on Wednesday to ease a blockade around West Bank cities.

The boy, Mahmoud al Qayed, was killed by a shell fired by an Israeli tank in the Gaza Strip near the Israeli agricultural community of Nahal Oz while hunting for birds with a net tied to a string, a witness and medics said.

An Israeli military source said soldiers shot at what they considered suspicious figures handling an electric cable in an area where explosives are often planted against troops, and that one Palestinian was hit while two others fled.

The source said soldiers later found no explosives had been placed there, but the zone is shut to Palestinian civilians.

“I fell to the ground with my foot bleeding and saw Mahmoud swimming in a pool of blood,” said Nimir Abu Asaous, 22, who was wounded.

Witnesses say four other Palestinians hunting birds, a popular hobby among Gazan youth, have been killed by soldiers in the same area in recent months.

Near Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp, soldiers killed a Palestinian after a bomb exploded close to a patrol, causing no casualties, the Israeli military source said. The Hamas said he belonged to its armed wing.

The bodies of two other Palestinians, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades linked with President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, were recovered near the town of Khan Younis after soldiers shot at Palestinians suspected of planting a bomb.

MILITANT ARRESTED: Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Jenin arrested the local head of Islamic Jihad, the army said.

The army said Amjad Abeidi was responsible for a number of suicide bombings in Israel, including an attack in the northern Israeli city of Haifa that killed 21 people last month.

As Israeli soldiers arresting Abeidi left Jenin, Palestinian militants opened fire at them. The soldiers returned fire, killing a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, witnesses said.

Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Nablus also came under fire from Palestinians, the army said. Soldiers fired back and killed a 24-year-old Palestinian who local witnesses said was throwing stones. The army said he had hurled explosive devices at the soldiers.

At Ein Arik, an Israeli bulldozer removed rubble the army had used to block the road. Israel says it erects such blockades to stop suicide bombers from reaching its cities.

Palestinians and human rights groups call such actions collective punishment.

Israel has said it is loosening travel restrictions to help Qorei wrest security powers from Arafat and press ahead with the roadmap, which charts reciprocal steps leading to creation of a Palestinian state in 2005.—Reuters