Israeli troops kill four Palestinians and leave 150 wounded

ISRAELI troops shot dead four Palestinians and wounded 150 others with live fire yesterday, medical officials said, as protests over US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital entered a second week.

Most of the casualties were on the Gaza Strip border, where thousands of Palestinians gathered to hurl rocks at Israeli sol- diers beyond the fortified fence. Medics said two protesters, one of them wheelchair-bound, were killed, and 150 wounded.

In the occupied West Bank, another area where Palestinians are seeking statehood along with adjacent East Jerusalem, medics said two protesters were killed and 10 wounded by Israeli gunfire.

One of the dead was a man who Israeli police troopers said was shot after he stabbed a member of their unit. Reuters witnesses said the Palestinian held a knife and wore what looked like a bomb belt. A Palestinian medic who helped evacuate the man for treatment said the belt was fake.

Palestinians – and the wider Arab and Muslim world – were incensed at Mr Trump’s December 6 announcement, which reversed decades of US policy reticence on Jerusalem, a city where both Israel and the Palestinians want sovereignty.

Washington’s European allies and Russia have also voiced worries about Mr Trump’s decision. There have been almost nightly Gazan rocket launches into Israel, so far without casualties.

A Palestinian man with a knife and what looks like an explosive belt after he was shot near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. He died later in hospital