TEHRAN Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man Monday in the Gaza Strip near the entrance of the Gush Katif Jewish settlement bloc, hospital officials said.

Mohammed Nafiz abu Musa, 21, was shot with a live bullet to his stomach while he was in the Khan Younnis refugee camp near Gush Katif, the officials added.

Witnesses said Israeli soldiers fired on Abu Musa and a group of Palestinian youths who were gathered near an Israeli checkpoint leading to the area surrounding Gush Katif.

Witnesses added that there had been no clashes at the time of the shooting.

Also nine Palestinians were wounded in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, one of them seriously, after being shot by Israeli gunfire, Palestinian hospital sources here said.

Among the wounded was a 12-year-old boy who was shot when Israeli soldiers opened fire on four Palestinian boys in the southern Gaza Strip, leaving the youth seriously injured with a bullet lodged in his brain.

The four Palestinian boys had been close to the Rafah border with Egypt when the Israeli soldiers shot at them, AFP quoted witnesses as saying.

A bullet entered Nidal al-Amgay's right eye and then pierced his brain. The other three boys remain in stable condition.

Witnesses and hospital sources said the boys had thrown no stones at the Israeli soldiers.

Later four other Palestinians including a policeman were shot by Israeli fire.

In a separate incident, Israeli soldiers shot an 18-year-old Palestinian in the back seat of a taxi driving on the main north-south road from Gaza city to Gaza International Airport, hospital sources said.

A Palestinian policeman was reportedly wounded by Israeli tank fire near to Netzarim. Witnesses said that a factory was destroyed in the attack.

In the meantime a Palestinian security official announced yesterday that the Israeli Army has kidnapped four Palestinians in a military operation Monday in the Gaza Strip.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an Israeli Army Jeep and armored vehicle commandeered a Palestinian minibus traveling between Gaza City and Khan Younnis and drove the four passengers to the Jewish settlement of Netzarim.

The identity of the passengers and why they were detained was not immediately clear.

In the meantime a Palestinian human rights group accused the Israeli Army Monday of targeting civilians with heavy artillery during the four-month wave of violence which has swept the Palestinian territories.

"We have evidence of indiscriminate fire," Ann Kristin Brunborg of the Palestinian human rights monitoring group told a press conference. "The Israeli Army is not taking any precaution on whether a target is civilian or military."

The report, entitled "overkill," alleges that the Israeli Army has shelled Palestinian civilian areas indiscriminately with mortars, tank shells, grenade launchers and missiles since the start of the Palestinian uprising or Intifada in late September.

A total of 25 people had been killed by the end of December as a result of Israeli shelling of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the report said, with another 729 wounded and 3,882 made homeless.

Overall, the number of people killed during the violence is almost 390, most of them Palestinians.

Brunborg said the Israeli Army has denied using grenades except in a few incidents, but the rights activists said they had recovered debris from grenades, mortars, tank shells and missiles in the West Bank town of Nablus.

A former British Army captain David Holley, who was a consultant for the report, said the Israeli Army was facing mostly lone Palestinians firing a few rounds from Kalashnikov assault rifles, Palestinians launching petrol bombs, or groups of youths throwing stones.

"These were not massive gunfights," said Holley.