Three killed during violence at funerals

CLASHES between Israeli troops and Palestinians killed at least three people yesterday including a 16-year-old boy, as thousands poured into the streets to mourn seven people killed in a missile strike.

Israeli troops shot dead a 21-year-old member of the Islamic militant group Hamas, a 35-year-old policeman and a 16-year-old boy, witnesses said.

The army said it fired at the 21-year- old who was near a rocket launcher in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, but was unaware of the other two deaths.

Earlier yesterday, Hamas militants fired a home-made rocket at an Israeli town in retaliation for a missile strike that killed a top Hamas commander and six others.

There were no injuries in the rocket attack on the town of Sderot.

Thousands poured into the streets yesterday for the funerals of the six people killed in the missile strike on Tuesday night.

An Israeli F-16 warplane fired a missile that slammed into a white car, turning the vehicle into a flaming wreck. A second missile exploded in the street, wounding at least 50 bystanders, witnesses said.

The coffins of the dead were covered in green Hamas flags. Angry mourners shouted: “God is great, revenge, revenge!” Some fired guns in the air.

Israeli security sources said the target of the air strike was Saed Arabeed, 38, a senior Hamas commander responsible for a series of deadly raids against Israelis over the past decade.

Two of the dead were Hamas militants, Palestinians said, while the other dead and wounded were civilians.

Meanwhile, an explosion wounded 20 students at a Palestinian high school in the West Bank yesterday. Israeli police said they were investigating if it was the work of Jewish vigilantes.

Lutfi Abu Oun, mayor of the village of Jaba’a, said two of the teenagers were seriously hurt and all of the wounded were taken to hospitals in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus.

School headmaster Ismail Salah said the explosion tore through a classroom for 16-year-old boys just as they returned from a midday recess.

Desks and chairs were thrown about and splintered, and pools of blood and glass shards littered the floor, witnesses said. An unknown Jewish group calling itself “Revenge of the Infants” claimed responsibility for the blast in a message sent to Israeli reporters’ pagers, according to police. “We have no hard evidence whether this was a true announcement,” Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman said.

“We have opened an inquiry and a decision has to be made whether we can send a bomb squad to investigate.”

Jewish vigilantes have carried out several attacks against Palestinians

during the 30-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence, in which militants have mounted dozens of bombings and shootings on Israelis.

Jaba’a was part of West Bank territories handed over to Palestinian rule under interim peace accords in the ’90s.