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DATE=10/04/00

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ISRAEL / PALESTINIANS (L)

NUMBER=2-267474

BYLINE=JENNY BADNER

DATELINE=JERUSALEM

INTERNET=YES

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Palestinians and Israeli troops clashed again Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, leaving at least two more people dead. As Jenny Badner reports from Jerusalem, 62 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed in almost a week of violence.

TEXT: Fighting between Palestinians and Israeli forces continued Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, the site of some of the worst violence in a week of bloody clashes.

Shooting intensified at the Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. Israeli gun ships fired missiles at buildings where Palestinians had reportedly taken up positions and fired at the nearby Israeli army base. A young Palestinian protester was killed.

The West Bank was generally calmer than it had been in recent days. However, violence in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem left one Palestinians man dead.

Also in the West Bank, shots were fired in the divided town of Hebron. And in Nablus, a site of fierce fighting in the past several days, gun battles broke out near a Jewish site. But, for the first time on Wednesday, Palestinian police kept Palestinians out of the area.

Jerusalem, the site of the first violent clashes last Thursday remained calm, although there was an increased police presence and a general strike in the mostly Arab eastern section of the city.

Israel's army spokesman says shots were fired in the mostly Jewish neighborhood of Gilo in southern Jerusalem, although no one was wounded.

Demonstrations by Arab citizens of Israel in solidarity with Palestinian protesters appeared to have died down. But in Jaffa, outside of Tel Aviv, Arab demonstrators blocked off a street and attacked journalists, injuring an Italian television reporter.

By the end of the day, the death toll of mostly Palestinian protesters had risen, as had number of injured, which the Palestinian Authority estimates at more than 15-hundred people.

The clashes bring back memories of the Palestinian uprising -- called the intifada -- in the occupied territories from 1987 to 1993. However this time, some Palestinians are shooting at Israeli soldiers. The Israeli army says the use of illegal weapons aimed at Israeli forces and civilians is a violations of past agreements.

The fighting started last week, after Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited a holy site in Jerusalem that is sacred to Muslims and Jews. (Signed)

NEB/JB/TVM-T/JWH