TULKARM, West Bank -- Outside this hardscrabble West Bank town, the death yesterday of Abdul Karim Salameh might soon be forgotten.

He was a 11-year-old boy, he threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, and then he was dead. A doctor said he had been shot in the head. A spokesman for the Israeli military said troops patrolling this Palestinian town had responded to a riot with weapons not intended to cause death.

By late yesterday afternoon, Abdul's body was gone, and a group of his playmates tossed a ball near the spot where he had fallen. In the swirl of conflicting accounts, the boy's mother, Salman Salameh, stood at her door greeting friends who had come to her home to grieve.

"May God grant you patience," a friend whispered with a kiss on the cheek, and then she walked into the street.

Such is the nature of the war being fought in Tulkarm, which Israeli troops have occupied since July after a number of terrorist attacks. Israeli soldiers have ringed the town with barbed wire, erected checkpoints on the roads and patrol the streets with a fierce vigilance. In response, residents have nurtured a loathing for their occupiers so intense that even their children have taken up the fight.

The fear and anger often combine to form tragedy, here and in any number of towns across the West Bank and Gaza. On Saturday, a 9-year-old Palestinian girl named Hanin Abu Suleiman died from a gunshot wound in the town of Khan Yunis in Gaza. Palestinians said she had been standing outside her home when she was hit by an Israeli bullet. Israeli military sources said soldiers returned fire after being attacked by Palestinian gunmen. They said they could not verify that they had hit anyone.

Yesterday, also in Gaza, a Palestinian cameraman working for the Associated Press Television Network was hit in the head with a bullet while covering a march by Palestinian and European demonstrators. Palestinians said the cameraman, Tamer Ziara, 21, was hit when Israeli soldiers fired warning shots to keep the marchers out of a restricted area and the bullet ricocheted. Doctors at a local hospital said his condition was not serious.

In Tulkarm, Israeli officials sent soldiers back into the town to investigate Abdul's death. The officials said they do not like having their soldiers in Tulkarm, but that the town has produced many terrorists. Last month, when five Israelis were gunned down in Kibbutz Mezer, Israeli officials said it was a man from Tulkarm who carried out the act. After the attack, Israeli troops demolished the home of a man they said had planned the killings, Muhammad Nahifa.

Yesterday, Tulkarm residents, some of them Abdul's schoolmates, stood about the spot where he was killed and offered to tell his story. They said he was one of the brightest boys in his class, that one of his enthusiasms was karate, and that he had left his home at 7 a.m. to take an English exam.

The test was finished by 10 a.m., and Abdul and his classmates ran out of school together. A few hundred yards away, they crossed a street named Slaughterhouse Road, so called for the butcher shop there. An Israeli armored personnel carrier and a jeep came along, and Abdul and his friends picked up rocks.

"We started throwing rocks at them," said Hussein Abu Shanab, 11. "When they passed by, we threw some more stones, so they came back."

Many times, Salameh said, she had told her son not to do such things, that they would bring trouble, but she raised her hands in resignation.

"He said he wanted to be a martyr," Salameh said. "All the children say they want to be martyrs. They play with stones; they play intifada."

Several Tulkarm residents said the boy had been shot by an Israeli soldier riding in a jeep. The claims could not be independently confirmed. Another boy, Asef Sharshir, 11, was shot in the leg, hospital officials said.

"I knew the soldier's face," said Majdi Jabi, 30, a carwash owner. "They were shouting at the soldiers, and he opened fire. It was like watching a movie."

At the site of Abdul's death, friends and neighbors erected a memorial of palm leaves, stones and a handwritten verse from the Quran. Abed Qaisi, one of the men who gathered there, stared at the memorial and shook his head with regret.

"They don't understand what martyrdom is," Qaisi said. "They're just kids."