Palestinian President Yassir Arafat and his cabinet, meeting late on Saturday in an emergency session in Ramallah in the West Bank, called on the UN Security Council and Secretary-General Kofi Anan to investigate bloody developments in the West Bank and Gaza. The death toll for on Saturday's clashes across the West Bank and Gaza Strip rose to 16 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, in addition to four reported clinically dead, according to Palestinian Minister of Health Riad Zanoun. He said that 500 were injured, 32 of them critically.
On Friday, seven Palestinians were killed and more than 200 were injured in clashes between Palestinian civilians and Israeli Police in the old city of Jerusalem. Forty-nine Israeli Police were reported injured.
The violence was the worst in four years, and undermined fragile peace negotiations taking place with the United States as mediator. In May, seven Palestinians were killed and some 500 injured in several days of unrest.
Palestinian security officials denied reports they had met with Israeli officials to calm things down. Mohammad Dahlan and Jibril Rjoub, commanders of the preventive security forces in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, said that they had not met Israeli chief of staff Shaoul Mofaz.
Dahlan called Mofaz a ''war criminal'' for allowing the Israeli army to use excessive firepower, including use of anti-tank missiles, to quell the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza.
According to Palestinian accounts, Saturday's victims included a 12-year-old boy and a paramedic who tried to rescue injured Palestinians.
The worst violence was reported in the West Bank towns of Nablus and Ramallah where huge clouds of black smoke billowed into the sky as Palestinians burnt tyres.

Bureau Report