Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian and another at a Gaza Strip checkpoint on Thursday, shortly after a drive-by shooting wounded five Israeli soldiers, AFP reported, citing Palestinian security officials.
AFP identified the dead man as Monyer Mustapha Abu Musa, 33.
According to the officials, Abu Musa had been shot in the head while driving in a taxi near an Israeli checkpoint between the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom and the Gush Katif settlement bloc.
The army said the shooting was in response to an earlier drive-by attack on soldiers at a checkpoint near Kfar Darom, when Palestinians in a passing vehicle fired five anti-tank grenades at them.
Different sources said between four and five of them were slightly wounded. It was unclear whether the two incidents happened at the same checkpoint, nor whether the soldiers who shot Abu Musa dead were the same who were attacked earlier.
The Israeli Jerusalem Post daily said in a report, there have been sporadic gun battles in the vicinity all afternoon.
Earlier today, a female Jewish settler was shot dead in another drive-by shooting near Bethlehem.
The incidents took place despite an already fragile cease-fire that both sides had pledged to respect two days earlier.
In the mean time, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is due to convene a snap mini-cabinet meeting Thursday night to discuss Israel's "response to breaches" of a fragile truce after the female settler, a spokesman for the Israeli premier said.
"It will be a meeting of the 'kitchen' cabinet," the spokesman, Ranaan Gissen, told AFP. "It will take place this evening."
The kitchen cabinet comprises an inner core of Sharon, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
"I regret that the Palestinian Authority has not honored its [cease-fire] pledge," the Haaretz daily quoted Sharon as saying after a woman was shot dead and her husband seriously wounded when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on their car near Bethlehem.
The Al Aqsa Brigades, the military wing of Fateh movement, had claimed responsibility for the killing.
Another group considered close to Fateh, the Popular Army Front-Return Battalions, had also claimed responsibility for three other anti-Israeli attacks in the West Bank, in which four Palestinians and two Jewish settlers were wounded.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post said Thursday that a meeting between Arafat and Peres was cancelled following the settler's killing.
Sharon reportedly spoke overnight with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and told him Arafat's recently declared cease-fire was not taking root in the field, said the paper.
An official in Sharon's office said that efforts were underway to convene a security committee meeting among Israeli, Palestinian, and CIA officials - perhaps at the same time or even before the Peres-Arafat meeting - that would attempt to restart security coordination between the two sides.
This followed a midnight meeting in Gaza on Sunday night among Arafat and Sharon's son, Omri, and Foreign Minister Director General Avi Gil, said the post.
At that meeting, according to a senior diplomatic source, Sharon and Gil reiterated to Arafat what the prime minister said in the Knesset earlier that day, namely that if he would implement a cease-fire, Israel would withdraw from Area A, end initiated military strikes, and ease up on various restrictions clamped on the Palestinians.
"Arafat does not trust what his aides tell him," the diplomatic official said, "so Sharon wanted to make sure he heard the message from his son."
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began in September 2000.
Abu Musa's death brings the total number of people killed in the year-long Middle East conflict to 818 people, 627 of them Palestinians and 168 Israelis.
According to Amnesty International, Israeli soldiers have killed roughly 100 Palestinian children, nearly all in situations where the safety of the occupation forces was in no immediate danger - Albawaba.com
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