Palestinian youths shot dead

Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians today in an escalation of bloodshed which brought the total killed in the West Bank to four within 24 hours.

Two teenagers were killed yesterday by troops who used what local medics said was live ammunition as they were controlling an occupation protest.

The renewed violence in the occupied territories fuelled tension amongst Palestinians around Nablus, who disputed official claims that rubber bullets had been used.

The fatal clashes came as officials confirmed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet President Barack Obama in Washington tomorrow amid continued US efforts to relaunch indirect negotiations between the two sides in the conflict.

The two Palestinians who died, said to be in their late teens, were from the village of Awarta near Nablus, on village farmland overlooked by the Jewish settlement of Itamar. Villagers said they assumed the pair were working the land. The Israeli military said they had tried to stab a soldier.

Dr Abdul Karim Hashesh, a medic at Nablus's Rafidia Hospital, where the bodies were taken, said that one, Mohammed Kuari, was hit by a total of seven bullets and the other, Saleh Kuaraik, was hit by at least three.

Young Palestinians burned tyres and set up makeshift roadblocks of rocks across one of the main roads into Awarta in protest at the shootings. Last Thursday, a Thai worker in Israel was killed by a Qassam rocket from Gaza.

Palestinians medics strongly disputed official claims by the Israeli military that two teenagers killed during clashes in the village of Iraq Burin, west of the city, had been shot with rubber bullets rather than live rounds.

The youths, Mohammed Qadus, 16, and Osaid Qadus, 18, were buried yesterday in the village, perched on a picturesque hilltop across a valley from the Jewish settlement of Brakha. There had just been a regular Saturday protest demonstration of a sort which has been on the increase in rural villages in the central West Bank.

One witness, Walid Jaber Qadus, 48, said that there had been earlier clashes on the eastern side of the village between stone-throwing youngsters and troops who took over the roof of a house and fired tear-gas and rubber bullets. But he said that neither boy had been throwing stones when they were fired on at the western side of the village by soldiers who had arrived in five Jeeps from the direction of Nablus.

Pointing to the steel shutters of a store outside which he said Osaid Qadus had been sitting, he said: "There had been a lot of tear-gas and he was just resting. When he was shot, Mohammed was on the other side and he went running to him shouting `Get an ambulance' and then he was shot as well."

He pointed to a trail of blood in the middle of the road left as he and three other men carried the boys up the hill to find a Ford transit service taxi to take them to hospital.

The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had opened an investigation into the shootings but also insisted that soldiers had responded with tear-gas and rubber bullets to a "violent and illegal riot" and added: "Live fire was not used."

But a hospital X-ray published by the Israeli human rights agency Btselem, and also shown to The Independent by doctors at Nablus's private Speciality hospital, show what appears to be a conventional steel bullet lodged in the brain of Osaid Qadus, who died of his injuries at about 3am yesterday.

Dr Ahmad Hamad, the duty resident in the hospital's accident and emergency department when the boys were brought in, said that Mohammed Qadus had suffered a single shot in the chest. He said there had been a small entry wound and a larger exit wound in his back.

The Popular Struggle Co-ordination Committee, a loose body of protest organisers in West Bank villages, said that "less-lethal ammunition, rubber-coated bullets included, can, under no circumstances, cause such injuries, even if shot from point-blank".

Dr Ahmad, who also agreed that a rubber bullet could not have caused such a wound, said Mohammed Qadus had failed to respond to cardiac massage and been pronounced dead 40 minutes after arrival.

- INDEPENDENT