Three Arabs Killed, 21 Others Injured

JERUSALEM--Israeli soldiers yesterday shot and killed three Arab guerrillas who were trying to infiltrate from Lebanon, the military said.

Violent protests persisted for a second day in the Gaza Strip, which was home to five of the eight Palestinians whom Israel deported to Lebanon on Monday. Hospital and relief officials said at least 21 Arabs were injured.

Israel claims the deportees incited much of the violence in the occupied lands that has claimed the lives of 143 Palestinians, one Israeli soldier and a teen-age Jewish settler since it began Dec. 8.

Before dawn yesterday, soldiers on a routine patrol spotted the three guerrillas just north of the Kfar Yuval collective farm, chased them and opened fire, the army said in a statement.

The military communique did not give the affiliation of the guerrillas who carried out the raid, but said they were armed with M-16 rifles, four rockets and hand grenades.

It was the second attempted infiltration in nine days at the same location and the 10th across Israel's borders since November. An April 5 attempt was claimed by two factions of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.

Israeli officials have linked past guerrilla raids to the four-month-old Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

In the Gaza Strip, United Nations relief workers and Arab hospital officials said soldiers opened fire yesterday at protesters outside a school in Jabaliya refugee camp, wounding 14-year-old Diah Ahmed Jaber in the left thigh.

Twenty other Palestinians were injured by tear gas and rubber bullets, said Dr. Ahmed Yassih of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, where some of the injured were treated.

In the Deir el Balah refugee camp, soldiers yesterday confiscated identification documents from most of the men in the camp and told them they would have to pay their electricity and water bills before they would be returned, said U.N. official Eric Peterson, an administrator of the camps.

The Israeli military command said it was checking the reports.

The army said one Arab died, 25 were hurt and one soldier was injured Tuesday in fighting in the West Bank and Gaza.

In another development yesterday, an Israeli newspaper said an army inquiry into the killing of a Jewish settler girl in the West Bank village of Beita last week indirectly would blame the shooting on the Jewish guard Roman Aldubi, who was knocked out by a rock during the melee and remains hospitalized.

A preliminary army probe determined that 15-year-old Tirza Porat died from a bullet fired by Aldubi's M-16 rifle. Settlers claim she was shot either by an Arab who took the rifle or by an Arab with another weapon. Israeli officers have said they believe Aldubi accidentally fired the fatal shot in panic.

The Hadashot newspaper said the final army report shows Arabs wrested the rifle from Aldubi but did not fire it. The paper said the inquiry implies that Aldubi accidentally shot the girl before he was knocked unconscious.

The controversy over the shooting caused a stormy session of Parliament's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday during which the Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Shomron accused Jewish settlers of trying to manipulate public opinion against the army's findings.

"I hope and pray we don't reach the stage in which we have to have recourse to a polygraph test," the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying.