Gaza City, Oct 18 (AFP) - Dozens of Palestinians were wounded in scattered clashes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Wednesday, as violence continued despite the Sharm-el-Sheikh truce accord.
In the central Gaza Strip, 30 Palestinian youths were wounded in fighting with Israeli soldiers guarding a Jewish settlement, all but two with live bullets, witnesses and hospital sources said.
Soldiers fired on the youths from the nearby Deir el Balah refugee camp when they stoned the army post at the entrance to the Kfar Darom settlement.
One of the wounded, a 12-year-old boy, was in a serious condition at Shifa hospital in Gaza City. The other wounded were taken to Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis.
Clashes were also reported in Erez, the Israeli-controlled crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, with youths stoning troops. Six were injured, three of them with live rounds, and the rest with rubber-coated steel bullets.
Another three were hit by rubber bullets near the Khan Yunis Jewish settlement
Witnesses said Palestinian police were physically removing demonstrators from Erez and Kfar Darom.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, 10 people were hit by rubber-coated steel bullets or suffering from inhalation of tear gas fired by Israeli forces, witnesses said. An AFP photographer was among those hurt, hit in the hand by a rubber bullet.
Seven Palestinians were also injured by rubber bullets in clashes with Israeli troops in three villages near Bethlehem, witnesses said, while at Rachel's Tomb at the entrance to the city, Palestinians hurled stones at the army post guarding the site.
Witnesses later reported clashes at Beit Umar between Bethlehem and Hebron to the south between Israeli troops and dozens of stone-throwing Palestinians venting their anger over the death of a villager from wounds sustained in clashes at least two weeks earlier.
They said one man was injured in the violence, which erupted when villagers learned of the death of Ibrahim Alami, 27, who had been taken to Jordan for treatment.
In Nablus, a town in the north of the West Bank that has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting over the past three weeks, five people were injured in clashes at the city's southern entrance.
Earlier in the day, a Palestinian man was shot in the hand during an exchange of fire between Palestinian gunmen in civilian clothes and Israeli troops at the same site, hospital officials said.
Another five were wounded by rubber bullets in clashes in Salfit and Tulkarem, also in the north of the West Bank. – AFP.
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