NABLUS, West Bank, 8 April 2003 — Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops and two Israelis were stabbed, one of them seriously wounded, by two attackers yesterday, police said.

A member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades was killed last night by Israeli special forces near the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian officials said, while the body of another Palestinian shot dead overnight was found near a Jewish settlement.

The man was killed overnight when two soldiers guarding the entrance to Netzarim, just south of Gaza City, spotted him and another man approaching the settlement’s security fence and opened fire in their direction, the sources said.

Army patrols swept the area immediately after the incident but, failing to find anything, postponed the search to the following day. In daylight yesterday, a patrol discovered the body of the Palestinian man armed with a knife.

In the south of the Gaza Strip, two Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were injured in separate incidents yesterday morning, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.

Two Palestinian men, aged 30 and 70, were slightly hurt by shrapnel in the early hours when an Israeli tank fired a shell and heavy machine gun fire at buildings in Rafah refugee camp which lies close to the border with Egypt, Palestinian security and medical sources said.

The two men were standing in front of their homes when they were wounded, and there were no clashes in the area at the time, the sources said.

An Israeli soldier was also lightly injured after being hit by Palestinian sniper fire near the southern town of Khan Yunis, an army spokesman said, adding that the sniper escaped.

In northern West Bank, four Palestinians were wounded, two of them seriously, when Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian stone-throwers and a civilian car in two separate incidents yesterday, Palestinian sources said.

One Palestinian was very seriously injured after coming under heavy machine gun fire from an Israeli tank as he was driving in Burkin village, two kilometers west of the town of Jenin, security and medical sources said.

It was not clear why the soldiers had fired on the car, they added.

Farther south, three Palestinians were injured, one seriously, after troops opened fire on stone-throwers protesting a local militant’s arrest in Salem, a village east of Nablus, medical and security sources said.

A 54-year-old man, who was walking down the street, was hit in the stomach and said to be in serious condition, while another two men, aged 22 and 25, were said to be moderately wounded.

The disturbances broke out after troops moved into the village and surrounded the home of Nassim Karkari, a wanted Palestinian belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah movement, security sources said. The standoff continued for several hours until Karkari was arrested.

Israeli troops also arrested four wanted Fatah activists in the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem. And earlier yesterday, troops arrested 16 wanted Palestinians, an army spokesman said.

“Five of them were arrested in a house in Balata refugee camp in Nablus with dozens of kgs of explosives and two M-16 assault rifles, all of which was seized,” he said.

During searches in the area around the northern West Bank town of Jenin, troops discovered 13 home-made bombs which were all detonated in a controlled manner, he added.

Palestinian sources said two of the men arrested were senior members of the Ezzedin Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas.

In Tel Aviv, four Palestinian prisoners were called to testify in a court yesterday against the West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, but they all denied he had any links to “terror” activities.

The four appeared a day after the first Palestinian witnesses, also prisoners, were declared hostile witnesses for refusing to testify.

The men, all alleged Barghouti lieutenants, took the stand in the late morning and one-by-one denied the Fatah firebrand, seen as the one of the main inspirations behind the Palestinian uprising, was linked to armed activities.