Rioting in the West Bank Arab city of Nablus on Tuesday took the lives of a 5-year-old boy and a 15-year-old youth.
Three other local residents were wounded in clashes with Israeli security forces. An American free-lance journalist, Neil Cassidy, 37, of Oakland, Calif., was slightly injured.
He was struck in the knee by a plastic bullet, apparently fired by an Israel Defense Force soldier at the entrance to the casbah.
The death of the 5-year-old is being investigated. The circumstances in which he and the teen-ager were killed are unclear, military sources said.
According to the sources, the two were victims of “a chain of riots” that broke out shortly after Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin visited Nablus, the largest Arab town in the West Bank.
The soldiers opened fire when they were attacked with stones, iron bars and other heavy objects, the sources said. They added that often young children join in violent demonstrations.
Cassidy said he was standing behind a group of local youths when the plastic bullet hit him. Arabs helped him to the local Ittihad hospital.
The IDF blamed the journalist for his injury. A spokesman said he was in a closed military area and should have expected danger.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday it was “deeply concerned” about the shooting of the American journalist. Spokesman Charles Redman said, “We are asking Israeli authorities to expedite arrangements” so that Cassidy “receives medical care at a suitable facility.”
Cassidy is both a writer and photographer. His work has appeared in Impact Visuals, a magazine published in Brooklyn, and in the bi-weekly Frontline, published in Oakland.
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