Two Palestinians hurt in Gaza parliament shooting

GAZA, Dec 9 (Reuters) Two Palestinian parliamentary guards were wounded when demonstrators and parliamentary security guards exchanged fire at the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza City today, a lawmaker and medical staff said.

Some 1,400 uniformed police and other security officers demonstrating over the non payment of their salaries stormed into the parliament compound while some fired into the air as slogans were chanted from loudspeakers.

Hospital staff said the condition of the parliamentary guards, who were protecting lawmaker Ahmed Bahar of the governing Hamas Islamist group, was not serious.

''We view very gravely the attack against the Palestinian Legislative Council, whose aim is to create tension in Palestinian areas,'' Bahar said at a news conference.

A similar demonstration in the town of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, which attracted more than 3,000 participants, passed quietly, witnesses said.

At a clinic in the town of Hebron in the southern West Bank, scores of women carrying their babies demanded that striking medical staff vaccinate their young. They said they had been waiting for months to receive the vaccinations.

Palestinian government employees have received either very little or no pay since Hamas swept to power in parliamentary elections last January.

Western donor nations to the Palestinian Authority have been withholding aid after Hamas rejected their demands that it recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept previous interim peace deals.

Protesters chanted: ''We will not go to Damascus and Tehran for our salaries.'' MORE REUTERS AB BD1922