A Palestinian youth died yesterday at a West Bank hospital following a clash with Israeli troops near Ramallah, Palestinian hospital officials said.

The confrontation was one of three in a matter of hours in which Palestinians died from Israeli-Palestinian violence on one of the most tense days in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in recent months.

Israeli soldiers fired at the Palestinian after he threw a fire-bomb at them, the military said.

Earlier on Friday, an 18-month-old Palestinian boy was killed in a house fire in the West Bank village of Duma near Nablus that was set by suspected Jewish assailants. His parents and a sibling are in critical condition in Israeli hospitals, officials said.

In the Gaza Strip the same day, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian teenager near the border fence in the northern part of the coastal territory, Palestinian medical officials said.

Israeli troops yesterday used riot dispersal means to break up a stone-throwing clash in the West Bank between Israeli settlers and Palestinians, the Israeli army said. No casualties or arrests were reported.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official in Nablus who monitors settlement activity, said the settlers attacked farmers working their land in Kusra village.