Nablus, West Bank - Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man during a clash with stone throwers yesterday as the military pushed forward with a large-scale crackdown in this West Bank city, Palestinian witnesses and medical workers said.

The army said it was investigating the report of a fatal shooting. In later rioting, Palestinian crowds fired guns and threw bricks and Molotov cocktails at soldiers, the army said.

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The Israeli army has been operating in Nablus for more than a week, calling the city a "hotbed of terrorist activity." But yesterday's incursion partly was a response to a suicide bombing near Tel Aviv on Thursday, which killed four Israelis and is believed to have originated in Nablus, Israeli officials said.

In Nablus, Palestinian witnesses said Regai Rayan, 20, of the Balata refugee camp, was shot in the back and died after a crowd of youths threw rocks at an Israeli tank. Seven others were also wounded, they said.

In a demonstration against Israel's construction of a separation barrier in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, about 200 people marched to the barrier and climbed the 25-foot-high concrete structure, while others threw rocks and burned tires. Witnesses said one person was wounded slightly in the head by a rubber bullet fired by Israeli troops, and several others were treated for tear gas inhalation. The army said it used smoke grenades to disperse the crowd when people started climbing on the barrier, but had not fired bullets. The concrete wall barrier encircles much of Qalqiliya, making it difficult to enter or exit the town located across the West Bank border with Israel.

In a separate clash in a village near Nablus, a 13-year-old boy was shot twice in the stomach and seriously wounded, Palestinian witnesses and medical workers said. Troops imposed a closure in the eastern part of Nablus and witnesses said some 50,000 people, nearly half the city's population, were forced to stay in their homes.