Israeli occupation soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, and a Hamas activist was critically wounded in an explosion in his home. Along the Gaza border with Egypt, a 13-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli occupation soldiers who were clearing territory in an Israeli-controlled buffer zone near the Rafah refugee camp, Palestinians hospital officials said. Seven were wounded.

In an explosion at a home in the Bureij refugee camp south of Gaza City, Mohammed Baghdadi, 30, lost a leg, doctors said. Baghdadi is a former bodyguard of Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

The Israeli occupation army claimed it had nothing to do with the blast.

Thousands March in the Funeral of Jihad Leader

In Gaza, thousands marched in a funeral procession for 52-year-old Islamic Jihad leader Abdallah al-Saba, who died Sunday with explosives strapped to his body, defying Israeli occupation soldiers who demolished his house.

Saba's home was targeted after al-Saba's son, Mousab, attacked Israeli occupation soldiers last week before he was shot to death.

Also Tuesday, four women and a 13-year-old girl were lightly hurt by shrapnel from Israeli shelling and machine gun fire toward the market of the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, witnesses said.

In Nablus, a 23-year-old Palestinian wounded when Israeli occupation soldiers fired on rock-throwers in the West Bank city of Nablus on Feb. 16 died Tuesday, hospital officials said.

Nationalists Join Sharon Coalition

The Likud Party of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has reached a tentative coalition agreement with the right-wing National Union Party (NUP).

The deal, if finalized, would increase Mr. Sharon's majority in the Knesset to eight votes, and would swing his cabinet further to the right.

The NUP, which has seven seats, is strongly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state, but Mr. Sharon has supported it in principle by signing up to an American peace plan, which foresees an independent Palestinian state by 2005.

Correspondents say the new Israeli political line-up represents a setback for American-led efforts to restart the Middle East peace process.

PHOTO CAPTION

Medical workers prepare the body of 13-year-old Ahmed Abou Olwan in the morgue of the Najar hospital in the southern Gaza town of Rafah Tuesday Feb. 25, 2003. (AP Photo/Khalil H