Nearly 60 Palestinians were shot and wounded, four of them seriously, in scattered confrontations with Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Saturday, witnesses and hospital sources said.
Clashes erupted in several parts of the Gaza Strip as hundreds of Palestinians joined the funeral of Jaber Ahmad al-Mishal, 23, who was killed Friday by an Israeli bullet near the Erez crossing point between Gaza and Israel.
A total of 34 people were injured there, three of them seriously, hospital officials said.
Masked men fired into the air as mourners, many brandishing Palestinian flags and those of the militant Hamas group and the Lebanese Shiite guerrilla movement Hizbollah as they carried the body through the streets of Gaza City.
"Revenge, revenge, Ezzedine al-Qassam," the crowds chanted, referring to Hamas's military wing that has carried out numerous anti-Israeli attacks. "We are going to Jerusalem with millions of martyrs."
The clashes occurred near the town of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, in Rafah near the border with Egypt, and near the Karni crossing point into Israel.
At Khan Yunis, several hundred Palestinian youths gathered on a football field overlooking the large Gush Katif Jewish settlement, throwing stones and bottles at Israeli soldiers guarding the encampment.
An AFP correspondent saw five people winged when the Israelis opened fire with live rounds mid-afternoon. The injured were ferried immediately to hospital by ambulances waiting in the goalmouth at the other end of the field.
On the way to Khan Yunis, the correspondent saw another two youths, part of a crowd throwing stones at the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, cut down by Israeli bullets. They, too, were ferried to hospital.
At Rafah, on the border with Egypt, witnesses said at least three youths were injured by Israeli gunfire during clashes earlier in the day. Late in the afternoon, a large crowd was still gathered in an alley, using slingshots in a bid to try to penetrate the Israelis' massive breeze-block fortress in the narrow zone separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
Demonstrators also set fire to several Israeli buses at Erez with Molotov cocktails, witnesses said.
In Jenin in the northern West Bank, 10 Palestinians were injured in clashes, one seriously, and teenager Hadi Amin Dabaya was declared clinically dead after being critically wounded the day before, hospital sources said.
His death raises to 145 the number of people killed since the start of the Palestinian uprising on September 28, almost all of them Arabs. More than 4,000 other people have also been wounded over the past month.
At the northern entrance to Ramallah, the scene of almost daily clashes, 10 Palestinians were wounded as a youths hurled stones at Israeli troops who responded with teargas and occasional shooting.
Around 2,000 mourners attended the funeral of Ghassan Salem Awaissah, another of the four Palestinians killed Friday on what had been declared "day of rage."
Awaissah, 27, was buried in the nearby village of Beitunia.
The two others to die in the West Bank on Friday were buried the same day.
Another four people were wounded Saturday in the village of Al-Khadr near Bethlehem – GAZA CITY (AFP)
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