Last update - 17:34 - 09/04/2005
By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondents and News Agencies
Israel Defense Forces soldiers shot dead two Palestinian youths in the Gaza Strip Saturday.
The two boys, 14, were identified as Mussa and Khaled Ghanam. An additional Palestinian youth was seriously wounded in the incident near the Tel a-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
According to Palestinian sources, a group of youths was playing on the outskirts of the Rafah refugee camp, several hundred meters from the frontier. IDF forces opened fire on them from the south. The injured youth underwent surgery at a Rafah hospital.
Three men had approached a buffer zone near Israel's border with southern Gaza in the Rafah refugee camp. Troops fired at them after they failed to heed warning shots, a military source said.
A rise in violent incidents has been registered recently in the Gaza Strip. A Qassam rocket landed in the Negev town of Sderot several days ago, and a mortar shell landed in a Gaza settlement.
No Palestinians or Israelis were killed in the Strip during the month of March. In the West Bank, one Palestinian, 25-year-old Islamic Jihad activists Abd al-Latif Abu Khalil was killed.
Today 09 Apr 2005 | 17:59 KT
BAGHDAD, April 9 (KUNA) -- One Iraqi citizen was killed and 10 others were wounded on Saturday in two blasts that took place in separate locations in Mosul in northern Iraq.
Witnesses told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that a car driven by a suicidal bomber blew up, targeting an Iraqi police patrol near the Agricultural Department in western Mosul, killing one citizen and wounding 10 others, among them were policemen.
Other witnesses said another car exploded at a road intersection in central Mosul, noting that Iraqi security forces cordoned off the scene immediately, while losses were not determined yet.
The witnesses added that ambulances rushed to transport victims of the second attack to a nearby hospital.
Earlier today, a bomb explosion seriously injured two civilians at a crossroad in the southern city of Basra.
Eyewitnesses told the Kuwaiti news agenct that the explosion was aimed at a police patrol that passed by that road but instead it hit a civilian car that followed it.
The two civilians were transferred to the hospital for treatment.