Palestinians, Jewish settlers clash in Hebron

A Palestinian man was seriously injured late Tuesday in the West Bank town of Hebron after some Jewish settlers beat him up at his home, a Palestinian medical source said. According to an ambulance driver who took 41-year-old Marwan Burkan to the hospital, "several (Israeli) settlers came and knocked on his door and beat him up at this house in Hebron," he told AFP. Burkan lives in a house next to the Kiryat Arba settlement, with some 6,500 people, on the outskirts of Hebron, the ambulance driver said. When Palestinians gathered in protest outside Burkan's house, Israeli soldiers used tear gas to disperse the crowd when they started throwing stones, he added. An army spokeswoman told AFP that "some Palestinians threw stones at two Israeli girls in Hebron, and the father of the one of them went to the first house in the neighbourhood to get even." The Israeli spokeswoman however said no one was injured and calm has been restored. Tensions are high Hebron, the biggest city in the Palestinian Territories, between the 190,000 Palestinian inhabitants and some 600 Jewish settlers living in an enclave in the heart of the city, several kilometres (miles) from the other settlement of Kiryat Arba.