JERUSALEM -- Israeli soldiers, cornered by protesters hurling metal pipes and stones, shot and killed two Palestinian boys, 11 and 17, Thursday during a second successive day of violent demonstrations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
At least 14 other protesters and eight members of the Israeli security forces were injured in clashes in the territories. In other unrest, merchants in the West Bank town of Nablus and the nearby Balata refugee camp shuttered their shops at midday and classes throughout Gaza were canceled.
The protests followed Wednesday's fatal shooting of a high school student and the wounding of at least 28 people by Israeli troops in day-long disturbances in the Gaza Strip.
The two days of unrest apparently were triggered by Israel's decision to deport a Palestinian activist and the deaths of four Gaza residents in a Tuesday highway accident.
The four were killed when the van they were riding in collided with a truck driven by an Israeli. Gaza residents charged the truck driver caused the accident to avenge Sunday's fatal stabbing of a Jewish businessman in Gaza City.
The Israeli military administers the Gaza Strip and West Bank, seized from Egypt and Jordan, respectively, in the 1967 Six Day War. About 1.5 million Palestinians live in the two territories.
Rashad Shawwa, the former mayor of Gaza City who was twice removed from office by the Israelis, blamed the outbreak of violence on Israeli occupation.
'After 20 years of miserable occupation, the people have lost all hope, they are frustrated, they don't know what to do,' he said.
In a related development Thursday, Israeli authorities closed the Arabic-language, Palestinian daily Al Fajr, for 10 days because it reportedly published information about the unrest without approval of the military censor.
On Thursday, protesters in Nablus, 30 miles north of Jerusalem, attacked an army patrol with rocks and metal pipes, wounding an officer.
When tear gas and rubber bullets failed to disperse the demonstrators, the cornered soldiers opened fire, killing Ibrahim Al Aklek, 17, of Nablus, and wounding two other youths, Palestinian and military sources said.
In the Gaza Strip, protesters piled burning tires in roads and threw Molotov cocktails at soldiers. At least five Palestinians were wounded, three by gunfire, and one soldier was hurt slightly by a rock in two separate confrontations, an Israeli military spokesman said.
One of the wounded, an 11-year-old boy, later died at Tel Hashomer Hospital near Tel Aviv, military sources said.
At the Kalandia refugee camp north of Jerusalem, six policemen were wounded while breaking up a demonstration by stone-throwing students, a Jerusalem police spokesman said.
Twenty-three students, some waving the outlawed Palestinian flag, were arrested and five wounded. Many students later were treated for exposure to tear gas, Palestinian sources said.
At the Balata refugee camp, a woman who tried to stab a soldier was slightly injured when soldiers disarmed her. Two other protesters also were hurt. Two Molotov cocktails were thrown at Israeli vehicles but no one was injured.
Arabs also staged protests in Jerusalem's walled Old City.
