A 17-year-old Israeli girl and two Palestinians were shot to death in a clash today between Israeli civilians and Arabs in a West Bank village, the army said. It said 15 Israelis, including a soldier, were wounded. The Israeli girl was the first Israeli civilian to die in four months of unrest in the occupied territories. There were conflicting reports on what led to the violence in Beita, about 15 miles from Nablus. Palestinians who said they witnessed the clash from a half-mile away said about 30 Israeli settlers entered the village on foot and fired without provocation, killing one Arab. Angry villagers then charged the settlers, the Palestinians said. ``The first man who was killed, Mousa Saleh Abu Shamseh, was plowing his land,'' said Mohammed Abbas Aly. Abu Shamseh was 20. ``When they heard a farmer was killed, they attacked the settlers with axes, picks and rocks. There was hand-to-hand fighting,'' said Aly, who was interviewed at Nablus' Al Ittihad Hospital. Aly said Fayez Al Jabr, 22, was killed when he ran toward the settlers brandishing a stick. The army and Israeli witnesses said the violence began when Palestinians stoned a group of Israeli teen-agers on a Passover bus and hiking tour of the West Bank. An army statement said two security guards on the bus opened fire at the stone-throwers, killing two Arabs and wounding two others. During the clash, the army said Arabs grabbed an M-16 automatic rifle and an Uzi submachine gun from the guards and opened fire on the Israelis, killing the girl and wounding three other Israelis. Boleslav Godlman, administrator of Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv, said an adult and nine children ages 14 and 15 suffered minor injuries. He said most of the 10 were hit by stones and metal fragments. Most of the injured reportedly were teen-agers from the Jewish settlement of Elon Moreh, near Nablus. A soldier was injured in the head by a rock and was in serious condition in Jerusalem's Haddassah hospital, the army said. Another Israeli teen-ager was found slightly wounded in a villager's home. The army said the 17-year-old girl, whose name was not made public immediately, was killed by a bullet. It gave no details on how the other Israeli civilians were wounded. Shmuel Fuchs, 15, from Elon Moreh near Nablus, said 18 teen-agers, a soldier and a guide had left the bus and were sitting in a dry river bed when a group of Arabs began throwing stones at them. The Israelis got up and left ``and soon we discovered we were being followed by dozens of Arabs,'' Fuchs said from his Haddassah Hospital bed. Fuchs had a bandage on his right arm and the right side of his chest but said he did not know if he was hit by rocks or by bullets. He said some of the Arabs following the Israelis apparently wanted to help them and said ``come fast we'll lead you out of here.'' The Arabs led them a short distance to Beita. There, Fuchs said, ``a woman came with a huge stone, and she threw it at the head of the soldier.'' He said the guide who was armed opened fire on the Arabs. Gaby Bron, a reporter for Yediot Ahronot, said teen-agers at the bus radioed for help, and troops arrived and sealed the area, he said. The deaths brought to 140 the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis since unrest broke out Dec. 8 in the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War. One Israeli soldier has been killed. Benny Katzover, a settler leader in the West Bank, said the attack on civilians could prompt some of the 65,000 Israelis living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to take vigilante action. ``This is a most serious confrontation. If this time the situation is not brought under control, I think it will be impossible to stop every Jew from taking things into his own hands,'' Katzover told Israel army radio. Jihad Hawari, the Arab head of the Israeli-appointed village council of Hawara, near Beita, said Beita had been declared ``liberated'' from Israeli rule and was bedecked with the outlawed Palestinian flag. Arab witnesses said the clash lasted about 1{ hours, until soldiers arrived. The entrance to the village was blocked by seven army jeeps by afternoon, and an army helicopter hovered overhead. The army said a curfew was imposed on the area, confining the village's 12,000 residents to their homes. The army said it was searching for the Arab attackers.
