Israeli Troops Battle Palestinian Youths

KHAN YUNIS, Occupied Gaza Strip--Israel sent troop reinforcements backed by armored vehicles into the Gaza Strip yesterday to battle rioting Palestinian youths and one Arab was reported killed and nine wounded.

But despite the buildup, with armored personnel carriers patrolling trouble stops, bands of Palestinians roamed the streets of towns and cities in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, pelting cars with rocks and erecting roadblocks of burning debris.

The Israeli army reported a violent demonstration at nightfall in the Sajaiyeh area of Gaza City. Soldiers were struck by barrages of stones and opened fire, first with warning shots and then directly at the rioters, a military spokesman said.

Hospital officials said one Palestinian was killed, 30-year-old Toukan Mussabeh.

Arab reports said nine people, including an eight-year-old boy, were wounded and scores of others were injured in at least a half-dozen clashes.

There were scattered protests in the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River and many merchants closed their shops in both areas. Palestinian nationalist groups ordered another general strike in the occupied territories for three days starting Monday and said it would be enforced by patrols.

About 1.5 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which Israel captured from Egypt and Jordan in the Mideast War and which have been rocked by more than a month of rioting.

The official death toll in the rioting rose to 28 after the army confirmed Sunday that a 65-year-old man from the Gaza Strip city of Rafah died over the weekend of gunshot wounds sustained in protests last month.