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Youth Dies in Clash of Gaza Clans

Seventeen-year-old Naef Astal was killed and five people were wounded, including two policemen as two rival clans exchanged fire with Palestinian police in a dispute over land in the area of a former Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said Saturday.

The firefight Friday night was the first violent clash over former settlement-area land since Israel left the Gaza Strip in September. After the fatal shooting, dozens of people, including gunmen, vandalized a police station in the nearby town of Khan Younis and set two police cruisers on fire, said the governor of the area, Hosni Zourab.

Two clans staked competing claims to the land, Palestinian officials said. One of the clans, the Astals, had fenced off the area. Palestinian security sources said Saturday that the half-acre plot of land was in the public domain and located in the area of the dismantled settlement of Neve Dekalim. It was not immediately clear whether the land formerly was part of Neve Dekalim, or nearby, they said.