Palestinian teen dies after Israelis shot him in head
A Palestinian teenager has died of his wounds after the Israeli military shot him in the head at a rally in Gaza on Friday, as families mourned their lost ones at funerals.
Azzam Oweida, 15, was shot during a rally in southern Gaza, the enclave’s Ministry of Health confirmed. Hundreds gathered at his family home in the southern town of Khan Younis to attend his funeral.
Mourners carried his body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, to a mosque for prayers before burial.
“My son is a martyr and I am very proud of him,” said his father, Helal Oweida.
Azzam is the fourth Palestinian to die as a result of Israeli shootings across the Gaza border on Friday as Palestinians engaged in the fifth round of weekly rallies in the lead-up to the Nakba Day, the anniversary of the day they were driven out or fled after the formation of the Israeli state in 1948.
His death came after Zeid Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, had called for restraint from Israel.
Azzam is the fifth child to be killed by Israel since the end of March.
Forty-two Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded in the rallies that began with what was known locally as the Great March of Return on March 30.
Those protests call for the right of return for refugees to what is now Israeli territory.
Israel’s military claimed thousands had engaged in “riots” at the Israel-Gaza border on Friday and troops had used “riot dispersal means”.
It also said it stopped an attempted infiltration into Israeli territory by Palestinian protesters. But human rights groups and international organisations have condemned what they said was indiscriminate fire at unarmed protesters.
Some of the demonstrators burnt tyres, while others threw rocks and flew kites dangling objects to drop on the Israeli troops on the border. Israel has suffered no casualties in the five rounds of protest.
Israel accused Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that oversees the enclave, of instigating the protests and claimed militants are using civilians as shields. It holds the group responsible for any violent action that emanates from the coastal strip.
The EU and the UN Secretary General have called for an investigation into the killings. The UN envoy for the conflict warned on Thursday that Gaza could explode at any moment because of rising tensions over the rallies and the shootings.
“Old wounds continue to bleed and deepen as we speak, risking the outbreak of another war,” Nikolay Mladenov told the UN Security Council.
He called Gaza “a powder keg” that needs to be stopped from being ignited by changing the security and economic situation in the territory.
“People should not be destined to spend their lives surrounded by borders they are forbidden to cross, or waters they are forbidden to navigate”, he said. “They should not be destined to live under the control of Hamas, which invests in militant activities at the expense of the population”.
Hamas has fought three wars with Israel since 2008. The most recent, a seven-week summer conflict in 2014, resulted in the deaths of more than 2,200 Palestinians, UN figures showed.
More than 2 million Palestinians live in the narrow coastal territory. Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but it maintains control of its land and sea borders. Egypt restricts movement in and out of Gaza on its border.
US President Donald Trump angered the Palestinians and their friends in the Arab world by announcing that he would relocate the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem next month to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s creation as a state.
“They deliberately chose a tragic day in Palestinian history, the Nakba, as an act of gratuitous cruelty adding insult to injury,” a senior Palestinian official, Hanan Ashrawi, tweeted at the time.
Palestinians said Mr Trump appears to become more aligned with Israel each day and they now need the international community more than ever.
Old wounds continue to bleed and deepen as we speak, risking the outbreak of another war NIKOLAY MLADENOV UN envoy