Palestinian Killed at Gaza Strip Funeral

JERUSALEM Israeli soldiers beat to death a 15 year old Palestinian youth in the Gaza Strip and his burial yesterday turned into a violent protest in which troops shot and wounded four Arabs. U.N. and Arab reports said.

The Palestine Press Service said a second Palestinian died after he was shot in the head yesterday near the West Bank city of Nablus. The Arabrun agency said the circumstances of the shooting were not clear.

The army also confirmed that an Arab teen-ager had died but said it was investigating the circumstances. Army radio said the military spoke with army units in Gaza and found no evidence the Arab had been beaten by soldiers.

On Sunday, three Palestinians were killed in one of the bloodiest days in two months of violence that have occurred in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Fighting broke out in the West Bank after rumors spread that Jewish settlers were planning attacks on Palestinians there.

Forty-eight Palestinians have been killed by Israelis since violence broke out in the occupied lands December 8, according to U.N. count. The two deaths yesterday were not included in that total.

In Gaza yesterday, the body of 15-year-old lyad Mohammed Aql was found with a beaten head near his home in the Bureij refugee camp, said a senior United Nations official in Gaza City, and Arab reporter there and the Arab news agency.

Aql's cousin, 18-year-old Abdulla Ali Aql, also was beaten and suffered two broken arms, said the U.N. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Aql was buried today and the ceremony turned into a demonstration that spread to the neighboring Nuseirat refugee camp, the reporter said.

Four Arabs were wounded by gunfire, including a 10-year-old boy shot in the right thigh and a 17-year-old shot in the chest, according to officials at Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. A fifth Palestinian was shot in both legs in a separate protest in Gaza City, said officials at Shifa Hospital.

Israeli soldiers raided a neighborhood in Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp at midnight and beat Palestinian youths, the U.N. official said. Twenty were taken in U.N. ambulances to Gaza hospitals, he said.

In Jerusalem, police spokesman Rafi Levy said two Israeli school children were slightly injured yesterday when Arab protesters hurled stones at them while they were touring the Old City walls. In a separate incident, police fired tear gas to disperse stone-throwing Arabs outside the walled Old City, Levy said.

On Sunday Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians, the army said, and Arab news reports said 25 Arabs were wounded in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

The army said only seven were wounded.

Two other Palestinians died Sunday of wounds suffered earlier. The army denied responsibility for the death of one of the two, 15-year-old Rami Aklouk of Deir al Balah, in the Gaza Strip.

Fifteen Palestinian refugee camps, towns and villages were under curfew Sunday as the army tried to restore order.