Seventeen Palestinians were wounded, nearly half of them by live fire, in clashes with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday, witnesses and hospital sources said.
Eight of 10 people wounded in fighting with Israeli soldiers at the Rafah border crossing into Egypt were hit with live ammunition, the sources said.
The other two were hurt by rubber-coated steel bullets, as were four Palestinians who threw stones at an Israeli checkpoint near the town of Khan Yunis.
One Palestinian was shot and wounded with a live round at the Israeli settlement of Kafr Darom, near where a Palestinian suicide bomber on a bike wounded an Israeli soldier earlier Thursday.
Two Palestinians were lightly wounded by rubber bullets at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank.
The clashes there broke out near the western entrance of Beni Naim, an Arab village some five kilometers (three miles) north of Hebron, after a march by about 300 Palestinians, some of them armed, from Fatah, Yasser Arafat's dominant faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
The march was organized to support both Arafat and the continuation of the month-long Intifada or uprising against Israel in which 140 people have been killed, nearly all of them Arabs – GAZA CITY (AFP)
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