GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP - 8 October) -- The Palestinian leadership rushed to distance itself Monday from Osama bin Laden while its police forces opened fire on university students protesting the U.S.-led military strikes on Afghanistan.

Two Palestinians, ages 13 and 21, were killed in a gun battle between police and students in Gaza, police said. The worst internal fighting in several years also left 45 people wounded, Palestinian police commander Ghazi Jabali said.

The Palestinian Authority has tried to quell expressions of support for the Saudi exile accused of leading the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

In Gaza City, more than 1,000 students from the Islamic University staged a march Monday, carrying bin Laden pictures and waving flags of the Islamic militant group Hamas.

The marchers shouted bin Laden's name and chanted: ``Long live Palestine, long live Afghanistan, long live Islam.''

Police restricted coverage of the march, ordering journalist at one point to leave the area. After the march, dozens of students, some of them armed, waged a running battle with police who fired guns and tear gas in an attempt to break up the crowd.

A 13-year-old boy and a 21-year-old university student were killed in the fighting, police said. Forty-five people were hurt by tear gas, stones and bullets, doctors said. Among those were 10 policemen, including one who was shot, said the police chief, Ghazi Jabali.

In videotaped remarks aired across the Arab world Monday, Bin Laden sought to draw a parallel between his confrontation with America and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ``In these days, Israeli tanks infest Palestine -- in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jalla, and other places in the land of Islam, and we don't hear anyone raising his voice or moving a limb,'' bin Laden said in apparent criticism of the Arab world.

Bin Laden said that ``neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine.'' Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the Palestinian issue should not be used as an excuse for extremist political or religious positions. ``We don't want crimes committed in the name of Palestine,'' he said.

Bin Laden has called for driving Israel out of the Middle East before. However, his main emphasis has been on forcing U.S. troops out of his native Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest shrines. Rabbo said the Palestinian leadership had not decided whether it supports the U.S.-led attacks against Afghanistan. He said he expected the topic to be discussed during a meeting of Arab foreign ministers. No date had been set. ``It's true that there is an unfair situation and continuous crimes and killings exerted against the Palestinians,'' he said. ``This does not justify or give cover for anyone to kill or terrorize innocent civilians.''

The official Palestinian response stood in marked contrast to the position adopted in 1990 when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein said he was waging war with the United States on behalf of the Palestinians. At the time, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sided with Saddam against the United States, a decision Palestinian officials have privately acknowledged was a mistake. Arafat and several of his ministers were scheduled to travel to Cairo on Monday for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on events in Afghanistan.

The radical Islamic movement Hamas, which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel and has condemned U.S. support for the Israelis, was relatively restrained in its response to the campaign against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, which has been protecting bin Laden. ``We should boycott all American products and raise our voices against this new aggression against Islam,'' said Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader in Gaza.

Israelis, meanwhile, were told by their leaders they would probably not become a target of retaliatory strikes. ``There's no need to worry. We're not in this war,'' Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said.

The latest case, a man whose name was not immediately made public, was in stable condition Monday at an unidentified hospital, according to both the Florida and North Carolina health departments.

A nasal swab from the patient tested positive for the anthrax bacterium, said Tim O'Conner, regional spokesman for Florida's health department. It was not yet clear if anthrax had only infiltrated his nose, spread to his lungs or if he had a full-blown case of the disease.

The man's co-worker, Bob Stevens, died on Friday, the first person in 25 years in the United States to have died from a rare inhaled form of anthrax.

News that Stevens had contracted the disease set off fears of bio-terrorism, especially when it was revealed that Middle Eastern men were believed to have recently visited an airfield about 40 miles from Stevens' home in Lantana and asked questions about crop-dusters.

O'Conner said there is no evidence that either man was a victim of terrorism. "That would take a turn in the investigation," he said. "It's a different aspect, we were thinking more of environmental sources."

Stevens, 63, was a photo editor at the supermarket tabloid The Sun. Environmental tests performed at the Sun's offices in Boca Raton detected the anthrax bacteria, said O'Conner.

The Sun's offices have been shuttered and law enforcement, local and state health and CDC officials were to take additional samples from the building on Monday, O'Conner said.

About 300 people who work in the building are being contacted by the Sun and instructed not come to work Monday and undergo antibiotic treatment to prevent the disease.

The FBI was helping in the search for the source of the bacterium, said Miami FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela. But "the current risk of anthrax is extremely low," O'Conner said.

It was unclear when the final tests would tell whether or not the second man has full-blown anthrax. The bacterium normally has an incubation period of up to seven days, but could take up to 60 days to develop, O'Conner said.

"We're waiting for additional testing to see if it will become a confirmed case of anthrax or not," said Barbara Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "I realize for the public this is going to be a very slight distinction."

Michael Kahane, vice president and general counsel of American Media Inc., which publishes the Sun and two other tabloids, the Globe and the National Enquirer, confirmed the company closed its Boca Raton building at the request of state health officials.

"We are cooperating with the department of health and all other governmental agencies investigating this matter," he said Monday. "Obviously our first concern is the health and well-being of our employees and their families."

Only 18 inhalation cases in the United States were documented in the 20th century, the most recent in 1976 in California. State records show the last anthrax case in Florida was in 1974.

Officials believe Stevens contracted anthrax naturally in Florida. The disease can be contracted from farm animals or soil, though the bacterium is not normally found among wildlife or livestock in the state. Stevens was described as an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed fishing and gardening.

County medical examiners are looking over any unexplained deaths, but have not found any cases connected to anthrax. Veterinarians have been told to be on alert for animals who might have the disease, but none have turned up.

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/10/448.htm