A nine-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and four other children injured Wednesday when an unexploded Israeli shell they were playing with blew up in the Gaza Strip, witnesses and medical sources told AFP.
Abdel-Razeq al-Majaida, the head of general security in the Gaza Strip, accused Israel of committing an "ugly crime" against Palestinian children.
The shell had been fired earlier Wednesday at an area known as Brazil inside the Rafah refugee camp near the border with Egypt, witnesses said.
Dr. Radwan al-Akhrass of Rafah hospital, where the casualties were taken, said the four wounded children were seriously hurt. The identity of the dead child was not given.
"We deplore this ugly massacre. It is a crime, a dirty tool used by the Israeli war machine against our children and civilians," Majaida said in a statement.
In the West Bank, a 60-year-old Palestinian woman died of asphyxiation after Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at her house in the Jenin area, witnesses and medical sources said.
Israeli soldiers fired on several houses in the village of Jbah, as they searched for Amjad al-Fakhury, an activist of the Fateh movement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the witnesses told the agency.
Village residents opposed to the search clashed with the soldiers who started shooting and firing tear gas grenades, targeting the house of Khayriyah Mustafa Fashafshah.
The woman, who had been suffering from heart problems, "died of asphyxiation," according to Dr. Yahia Salam.
Another Palestinian was wounded in the leg by a bullet.
The army, meanwhile, reported that Palestinian gunmen opened fire against an army outpost near Rafah and that troops returned fire, but did not report any injuries, according to AFP.
It also said it opened fire when "violent disturbances" broke out at the industrial zone at Erez in the northern Gaza Strip near the border with Israel. It said troops used rubber bullets and tear gas against some 40 Palestinians throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called on Wednesday for a meeting of security cabinet, the second in two days, amid a wave of bomb attacks that have killed three and injured dozens.
The meeting will discuss "the government's response to the latest wave of terror attacks," said Haaretz newspaper.
The paper said that an explosive device, discovered by passersby in the parking lot of the market in Jewish settlement of Petah Tikva to the east of Tel Aviv, was detonated by police sappers. It added that there were no injuries.
Army Radio reported that the bomb was in a chocolate wrapper which was placed in a plastic bag.
Earlier, a bomb blast near the West Bank city of Qailqily killed three people and injured four others.
Security was high across the country, bracing for further attacks, said Haaretz newspaper.
The paper said that the explosion took place 7.30 a.m. at a gas station near the southern entrance to the city, not far from the Jewish settlement of Kfar Saba.
The wounded were teenagers between the ages of 12 and 15, said the paper.
One of the injured was said to be in critical condition, while three sustained light injuries.
Also Wednesday morning, sappers detonated a bomb near the main market in the coastal city of Netanya, according to the paper, but no injuries were reported.
Public Security Minister Uzi Landau said Wednesday shortly after the bombing near Qalqilya, that the security establishment had not been surprised by the "wave of terror attacks," according to the paper.
"The battle ahead of us will continue for weeks and months," he told Israel Radio.
The bomb attacks came a day after Israel was rocked by two other bomb attacks in Jerusalem that killed a suicide bomber and left around 30 people injured, heightening calls for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to retaliate.
In the face of growing public pressure by Israel's right extremists on Sharon to make good on his get-tough-on-terror message, officials said early Tuesday that Sharon wanted to wait until after the Arab summit in Amman, and Land Day on Friday, before stepping up Israel's response to Palestinian attacks, according to the paper.
The officials told the paper that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's goal was to escalate violence during the Arab summit, in an effort to draw a harsh Israeli response with the hope of galvanizing support and precipitating international intervention in the region.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas said that Wednesday's deadly bomb attack represented the pursuit of Palestinian resistance to occupation, but it stopped short of claiming responsibility, said AFP.
This attack is the continuation of the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation to force it to withdraw from the Palestinian territories," a Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Abu Shanab, told AFP.
However, he did not say that Hamas, which has in the past carried out dozens of deadly anti-Israeli attacks, was responsible.
On Tuesday, Sharon said that Arafat was "mainly responsible" for anti-Israeli attacks, and accused his Palestinian Authority of complicity, said AFP.
"I know how to deal with that and we will act in the appropriate time and place," he warned in the aftermath of two bomb blasts rocking Jerusalem Tuesday.
"We are witnessing a wave of terrorism," Sharon told a meeting of foreign mayors in Jerusalem.
"The Palestinian Authority is an accomplice to the attacks and its chief Yasser Arafat is mainly responsible."
"Arafat's Force 17 is carrying out attacks, and up to now he has not given the order to stop the terrorism," Sharon added in reference to the Palestinian leader's personal bodyguard, said the agency - Albawaba.com
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