Anti-Israeli Protests Flare

ISRAELI soldiers shot and wounded 82 Palestinians yesterday in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, a day after an Arab was found hanged in an Army jail, United Nations and hospital sources say. The weekend violence which engulfed the Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza was the worst since protests at the killing of at least 18 Arabs on Jerusalem's Temple Mount last month.

On Saturday, soldiers shot one Arab and wounded more than 180 after Israel's prison authority said Attiya Zaanin had hanged himself Friday in his Gaza City prison cell. Relatives said they did not believe Zaanin, a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) activist, had committed suicide.

Gazans are also angered by economic hardships imposed on them by Israel since the Oct. 8 Temple Mount shootings and a spate of Arab revenge attacks on Jews. ``People feel frustrated that the world is ignoring the plight of the Palestinians while everybody is focusing on the Gulf crisis,'' says Ahmad Yazgi, a PLO activist in Gaza. Palestinian news agencies said Zaanin was the eighth Arab to die during interrogation since the start of the uprising.