Gunbattles erupt in West Bank as Gaza farmer killed

The clashes in Nablus, which residents said were the fiercest for around six months, broke out during an arrest operation which saw around 20 jeeps pile into the northern city at daybreak.

As the troops fanned out across the city, they found themselves under attack first from youths throwing stones and then from Palestinian gunmen.

Doctors said that one of the 16 Palestinian victims, a 22-year-old student, was pronounced brain dead after being shot by the Israeli forces in the head.

Four of the victims were hit by live fire and the others were wounded by rubber-coated bullets, the medics added.

The Israeli military said that the two soldiers were hit by shrapnel from an explosive device launched at them as they attempted to arrest suspects holed up in a building.

"The activity is still going on," an army spokeswoman told AFP on Tuesday.

"There have been numerous incidents of Palestinian gunmen shooting at the forces. In some cases the forces returned fire.

"In addition there have been numerous incidents of Palestinians throwing rocks but the forces have not returned fire in those instances.

Nablus is regarded as a stronghold for a number of armed factions and will become an electoral battleground on Thursday when voters cast their ballot in a municipal election which will pit the radical Islamists of Hamas against the ruling Fatah movement.

While there were no immediate reports of arrests in Nablus, the army said it had arrested five members of the radical Islamic Jihad movement in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem overnight and another in the village of Salfit.

The army has been concentrating its arrest operations in the northern West Bank following a suicide bombing 10 days ago in the northern Israeli coastal city of Netanya.

Troops have also been sporadically firing artillery and tank shells into the Gaza Strip in response to a series of cross-border rocket attacks.

Palestinian medics said that a farmer, named as Ahmed al-Qara, was killed on Tuesday morning by one of the shells fired into the village of Abasan, east of the city of Khan Yunis.

While Israeli military sources said that they were not aware of any tank shelling since the previous evening, witnesses confirmed that there had been intermittent shelling throughout the night.

Israeli troops pulled out of Gaza in September but have maintained a presence along the border since then.

The latest fatality raised to 4,907 the overall death toll since the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, began in September 2000. More than three-quarters of the victims have been Palestinian.

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