An explosion killed at least five members of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in a tunnel under the Israeli border Thursday, Palestinian officials said.

"Five martyrs were killed in a resistance activity in Saghira neighborhood" in eastern Gaza City, the local Hamas information office said, without elaborating.

Israeli troops killed a Palestinian youth early Monday, as a widespread West Bank manhunt for three missing Israeli youths believed to be kidnapped entered its fourth day. 

Ahmad Arafat, 19, was shot dead near the West Bank city of Ramallah as Israeli soldiers were conducting arrests as part of efforts to locate the three teens, which Israel said were kidnapped near Hebron on Thursday.

A seven-year-old Gaza boy wounded in an Israeli air raid on the northern Gaza Strip died on Saturday, a spokesman for the Palestinian health services said.

Ali al-Awour was wounded in Wednesday's strike targeting his uncle, radical Salafist Mohammed al-Awour, who was killed. Another Palestinian man was wounded.

Qatar is stepping in temporarily to help the new Palestinian unity government pay former employees of Islamist movement Hamas' disbanded Gaza government, an official said Friday.

The Gulf state said it would contribute a total of $60 million (44 million euros) while the Palestinian Authority grapples with a pay row, the first challenge for a government formed to try to end years of Palestinian rivalry.

Shops in Arab east Jerusalem shut Thursday in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, many of whom have been hospitalized.

Business owners pulled down their shutters in the normally bustling Old City in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, an AFP correspondent said, to observe a strike called by an umbrella group of various political parties and factions.

Jordan on Monday summoned Australia's charge d'affaires John Feakes after Canberra said it would no longer refer to annexed east Jerusalem as "occupied," the foreign ministry in Amman said.

"The ministry summoned the Australian charge d'affaires and informed him that the kingdom is concerned about the Australian government's decision to stop referring to east Jerusalem as 'occupied'," ministry spokeswoman Sabah Rafei said in a statement.

Hamas on Monday slammed the Palestinian government in a wages dispute, demanding that President Mahmud Abbas step in to ensure the Islamist movement's Gaza-based government workers were paid.

The row, the first hitch for a new unity government sworn in last week, came to a head on Thursday when Hamas government workers clashed with their Palestinian Authority-employed rivals after the latter were paid and the former were not.

Israel on Sunday signed a key European-funded scientific research program despite guidelines barring funding to settlement-linked projects, officials said.

The signing of the Horizon 2020 agreement took place at a ceremony in Jerusalem presided over by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and outgoing European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. 

The Palestinian foreign ministry on Sunday summoned Australia's diplomatic representative after a top judicial official said Canberra would no longer refer to annexed east Jerusalem as "occupied."

Last week, Australian attorney general George Brandis sparked Palestinian fury by saying Canberra would not use such "judgmental language" to describe an area which was the subject of negotiations.

The Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved changes in a law that could block amnesty for Palestinians imprisoned for murdering Israelis.

The amendment, which needs to be approved by parliament before passing into law, would give the courts power to prevent Israel's president from granting clemency or shortening the jail term of anyone imprisoned for murder.