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Gunmen kill 2 Israeli guards

* Israeli troops kill 2 Palestinians
* Israeli, Palestinian activists demonstrate against fencing
* Burns to travel to region to revive roadmap

JERUSALAM: Gunmen shot dead two Israeli security guards on Saturday after Israeli troops killed an 11-year-old Palestinian boy and a Hamas militant in two separate incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, medical and security sources said.

The two men were privately-employed security guards at the controversial barrier which passes through the neighbourhood of Abu Dis and died instantly, the security sources said.

During an incursion by around 10 Israeli armoured vehicles and a bulldozer in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, troops responded with gunfire to stone-throwing, Palestinian medical sources and witnesses said, killing Ibrahim Jalamna, 11. Earlier in the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian who was planting a roadside bomb near the fence between the Palestinian territory and Israel, military sources said.

The army also announced it had arrested eight suspected Palestinian militants overnight in the West Bank, four of them near Ramallah and the other four in the Nablus area.

Hundreds of Palestinians joined by Israeli and foreign activists demonstrated near the northern West Bank town of Bartaa, on either side of Israel’s separation barrier.

Some 300 Palestinian protestors supported by foreign activists from the International Solidarity Movement gathered on the West Bank side of the fence, chanting slogans against the barrier.

Around 1,000 Palestinians and Israeli peace activists were on the western side of the gate, but a heavy army deployment prevented them from crossing the gate.

US Middle East envoy, William Burns, said in an interview published here Saturday he would travel to the region in two weeks in a bid to breathe fresh life into the troubled “roadmap” plan for peace.

Burns said he would carry out a “new tour to the region, in two weeks to relaunch the roadmap and examine developments in Iraq”, the official Egyptian daily Al-Ahram reported.

Israeli warplanes flew over Lebanon Saturday as the country celebrated 60 years of independence, just three days after renewed UN warnings that doing so could escalate regional tension, officials said. —Agencies

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