One Palestinian killed as West Bank protesters clash with Israeli troops
BIRZEIT, West Bank (Reuters) - About 150 Palestinian students threw firebombs and rocks at Israeli soldiers who responded with tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday after an Israeli raid on their university.
Also on Wednesday, a 17-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli troops during clashes with stone-throwers in Dheisha refugee camp near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, an ambulance service official said.
He identified the victim as a volunteer wearing a paramedic uniform. The Israeli military had no immediate comment. The West Bank violence took place after two days of cross-border fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in the Gaza area.
In the university unrest, three protesters were wounded by rubber bullets and two were treated for tear gas inhalation, ambulance crews said. There were no reports of Israeli casualties.
The protest broke out after Israeli forces, in a night-time raid on Tuesday, arrested three students at Birzeit University. Pro-Hamas activists at the school said the three identified with the Islamist group.
The military said that overnight it had detained 11 Palestinians in the West Bank suspected of what it termed terrorist activity but gave no specifics.
At least 187 Palestinians have been martyred since the Gaza protests began on March 30 to demand rights to lands lost to Israel in the 1948 war of its foundation, and the easing of an Israeli-Egyptian economic blockade.
A Gaza sniper has killed one Israeli soldier and incendiary devices flown over by Palestinians using kites and helium balloons have set off fires that destroyed tracts of forest and farmland in Israel.
Israel accuses Hamas, against which it has fought three wars in the last decade, of having deliberately provoked violence in the protests, a charge Hamas denies.
More than two million people are packed into Gaza, whose economic plight is a focus of so-far fruitless US-led efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, stalled since 2014.
Five Palestinian martyred by Israeli troops in Gaza
Earlier, Israeli soldiers martyred five Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, who were among thousands of people who thronged to the fortified Gaza Strip border on Friday as part of weekly protests launched half a year ago, Gaza health officials said.
Gaza health officials said 300 people had been wounded.
