A 13-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and two people wounded in an Israeli army attack on the West Bank town of Hebron. The boy was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli tank round fired during the attack, early on Tuesday, which occurred after the soldiers surrounded a building in the town. Israeli troops arrested one of the wounded Palestinians, eyewitnesses and hospital sources said. Family members named the arrested man as Bassim al-Dajani, describing him as a factory worker and not a member of any resistance group. He has been injured in the neck, they added. An 18-year-old girl was also wounded in the incident, which began shortly before dawn. The dead boy hit by as he watched the battle from the balcony of a house about 100 metres (300 feet) away, relatives said. A cousin of the dead boy said he had tried to convince him to go into the house because he was afraid he would be hurt, but the boy insisted on staying. Moments later there was a loud explosion and he came out to find the boy critically wounded. **Gunfire*** The casualties occurred after Israeli soldiers besieged an eight-storey building owned by the prominent Kawasmeh clan in the Palestinian-controlled sector of the city in their ongoing campaign to kill or arrest resistance activists. As they closed in they came under heavy gunfire from a number of resistance fighters. Witnesses said that the building was surrounded by two tanks and about 10 jeeps carrying scores of Israeli soldiers. Smoke was clearly visible from the building. In Tulkarem, in the same region, Israeli patrols came under fire, and a bomb exploded near a Jewish settlement in Gaza, but there were no casualties in either incident. Israeli troops also reportedly arrested three Palestinians in the West Bank town of Nablus and two more in Ramallah. **Zionist Crime*** In the Gaza Strip the bullet-ridden corpse of Muhammad Abd Allah al-Husni was removed on Monday morning near the town of Jabaliya. According to local medical sources, 17-year old Muhammad was shot repeatedly over several hours and prevented from calling for help on his mobile phone by an Israeli military post. Israeli soldiers continued taking shots, mostly at al-Husni's legs, whenever he made any attempt to move or treat himself. When an ambulance arrived, medics were prevented from attending to him. Locals recovered al-Husni's body which had multiple wounds to the head, neck, stomach and legs hours after al-Husni's fatal ordeal. About 500 under-18s have died since the Intifada in September 2000 - the vast majority of them after sustaining bullet wounds to the head. **US Wants Qorei to Tame Palestinian Fighters*** A senior US diplomat met with Palestinian prime minister-designate Ahmed Qorei to make clear that Washington's support for him depended on improvements to the security situation and a crackdown on anti-Israel attacks, the State Department said. The acting US Consul-General in Jerusalem, Jeffrey Feltman, saw Qorei shortly before Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told lawmakers that his nominee had accepted the post, the department said. "Acting Consul General Feltman (made) clear this overriding point that we have made in public, as well as in private, that the Palestinians' prime minister needs to be able to move on security and that is our key interest right now," spokesman Richard Boucher said. He would not say whether Feltman had promised Qorei that Washington would back him if he would wrest control from Arafat over the Palestinian security services but indicated that without such authority there could be no support. "The need to get control of the security services use that to get control of the terrorist organisations remains the same," Boucher said. "And whoever takes over as prime minister is going to face the same set of facts. In order to move forward on the road map, we need to do that." The White House on Monday expressed no specific preference as to who should be the Palestinians' prime minister, but said that the post must have extensive powers to quell anti-Israel attacks. "That office needs to be empowered, it needs to have the authority to crack down on terrorism. That means it needs to have all of the security forces under the control of the prime minister," said spokesman Scott McClellan. Qore, meanwhile, has proposed coming to a ceasefire agreement with Israel, Israeli public television reported. Qorei proposed a "true ceasefire accord" with Israel instead of a unilateral ceasefire declared by Palestinian militant groups in late June which was effectively ended with a deadly August 19 bomb attack in Jerusalem, sources close to the Israeli presidency were quoted as saying. Israel has so far rejected any ceasefire accord, saying this can only come after Palestinian armed groups are disabled. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Palestinian Parliament speaker Ahmed Qorei, also known as Abu Alaa, talks to the press at his office in Abu Dis, East Jerusalem. (AFP/Pedro Ugarte)