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Jewish settlers kill Arab

in campaign to occupy

West Bank hills

DURA AL-QARA(West Bank): Jewish settlers on Sunday shot dead a Palestinian when they opened fire on Arabs who stormed their campsite on a West Bank hill north of Jerusalem, witnesses said.

It was the first death in a settler campaign to occupy barren West Bank hills in an effort to thwart Palestinian self-rule and an Israeli army redeployment.

Hospital sources in the nearby town of Ramallah said Khairy Mohammed Abdel-Hafeez died of his wounds.

Witnesses said about 100 Palestinians from Dura al-Qara village went to a bare hill settlers had squatted on since late last week near Beit El settlement north of Ramallah.

The Palestinians tore down makeshift structures the settlers had erected at the site and set some of them on fire. The only settlers at the site, a woman and four children, fled.

More settlers arrived in cars and opened fire on the Palestinians, wounding at least one of them, a Reuters photographer at the scene said. The photographer said settlers also smashed his equipment and assaulted him. Police detained Silverman and other photographers at the scene.

Aharon Domb, a settler spokesman, said in a statement: "This morning Arabs from Dura al-Qara...burned the house that was built on the hill...several shacks were also burned." Domb made no mention of any wounded.

The Israeli army said it was checking the reports.

Settlers have been occupying hilltops in the West Bank since last month trying to block self-rule spreading to more of the West Bank from Jericho and the Gaza Strip where it began in May 1994.

Self-rule for Palestinians is a key condition of a 1993 peace accord between the Palestine Liberation Organisation(PLO) and Israel.

Troops have been dragging the settlers from the hills as the two sides have negotiated over extending self-rule.

Palestinians until Sunday had done no more than demonstrate against the settlers. Some Palestinians have been angered that troops do not immediately remove settlers from every hill illegally occupied.

There are more than 100,000 settlers living among the one million Palestinians in the West Bank. The settlers believe the territory is the Jewish people's by biblical right.-Reuter