Dozens injured as Israeli soldiers clash with Palestinians

Palestinian sources said more than 7,000 people marched on the West Bank town of Ramallah, triggering fierce clashes between demonstrators and Israeli soldiers stationed outside the town.

Medical sources said Israeli soldiers shot and wounded 40 people using rubber-bullets and tear gas canisters to disperse the Palestinian stonethrowers.

The sources said that similar clashes erupted in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya. A 23-year-old Palestinian was said to have been seriously injured after Israeli soldiers shot him in the head with a rubber bullet.

Fatah mainstream leader Marwan Barghouti said the intifada, or uprising would continue and be escalated "until Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories it has been occupying for more than three decades."

Meanwhile, hundreds of Islamic resistance movement Hamas supporters gathered in Gaza City's main square where they set light to an effigy of new Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and called for more attacks against Israel.

The Hamas supporters marched through the main streets of Gaza before halting in front of a building of the Palestinian authority. They also set fire to two coffins covered with Israeli flags.

Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Ranteesi told the crowds the only language Israel understood "is the language of force," and said "armed resistance and Jihad (holy war)" were the only ways to resist Israel.

In Gaza, 50 armed and masked young men, members of the Islamic Jihad wearing white shrouds, burned the flags of the United States and Israel.

The men were commemorating the death of one of the organization's members whom Israeli soldiers shot and killed last week while he was trying to cross the eastern borders between Gaza and Israel.

The man was carrying about three pounds of TNT explosives and was intending to carry out an attack against Israel.

Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have carried out a series of suicide bombing attacks into Israel over the last seven years, killing dozens of people.

(dpa)