By Tim Thompson

Staff Writer

This week, while two newly arrived U.S. envoys, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and General Anthony Zinni, haggle with Palestinian and Israeli leaders hoping to get them to buy into a renewed cease-fire after 14 months of continual violence, Palestinian communities continue to grieve the loss of seven youths who died last week in altercations with the Israeli military.

Last Thursday, five boys from the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Khan Yunis were killed by a booby trap that Israeli officials say was planted to kill Palestinian militants who used the area as a staging ground.

The boys, members of the same family, ranged from four to 14 years old. The trap exploded when one of the boys kicked a live shell, unaware of the danger of his action. The trap was placed near the U.N.-run elementary school that the boys attended, according to a New York Times report.

On Friday, in the wake of the boys' funeral, Israeli troops, trying to disperse a procession of mourners who were throwing stones outside the nearby Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim, shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, the Associated Press reported.

Another New York Times source reported the death of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, Kifah Ubeid, from the Deheishe refugee camp. Ubeid was among a group of protestors throwing stones outside the shrine of Rachel's Tomb, in Bethlehem on Sunday. He was shot in the chest when troops opened fire on the crowd.

A BBC report sets the deaths of the youths in a larger context of the victimization of children that results from the worldwide problem of land mines. The report states that around 8,000 children die every year as a result of land mines and unexploded ammunition.

Children are specifically at risk because they might mistake the explosives for harmless objects: Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s favored a mine called the ``butterfly'' because of its resemblance to the insect.

Whatever the tactical purposes of the military forces who planted the trap in Khan Yunis, the deaths of the boys has again drawn attention to the terrorizing effect of such weapons.

These deaths, together with Palestinian reprisals against Israeli soldiers and citizens, raise the death count in Israel and the occupied territories to 17 since Thursday.

On Tuesday, while Zinni and Burns were on a helicopter tour with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, two Palestinian gunmen opened fire in the town of Afula, killing two Israelis and injuring 14 others before they themselves were killed by police.

A CNN source quotes Zinni as saying in response to the event that ``a cease-fire is what we need to get to something more comprehensive and lasting.''