Palestinian on boat from Gaza killed by Israeli fire

JERUSALEM: A Palestinian was killed on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on a boat from the Gaza Strip after it left a zone where Israel allows Palestinians to fish, officials said.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said the boat “deviated from the designated fishing zone in the northern Gaza Strip.”

Naval forces called on the boat to halt, then fired warning shots in the air before shooting toward it when the three people on board did not stop, the spokeswoman said.

A severely wounded Palestinian later died from his injuries, she said. The other two Palestinian “suspects” were detained by security forces.

The fishermen’s union in Gaza said a boat with three fishermen was fired upon by Israel’s military.

Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, run by Hamas, have fought three wars since 2008 and the territory has been under an Israeli blockade for more than 10 years. Fishing off the northern part of the strip, adjacent to Israel, is limited to six nautical miles offshore and the Israeli navy regularly fires warning shots or at Palestinians who breach it.

Such incidents rarely result in deaths.

Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif Qanoua called the incident “an ugly crime... the occupation is responsible for and a form of continuing aggression against our Palestinian people.”

The Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt has also been largely closed in recent years.