Israelis maim 6,400 Gazans in eight months

Israeli snipers have shot 6,392 Palestinian protesters in the legs in eight months of weekly rallies in Gaza, leaving streets and hospitals filled with maimed victims.

Since March 30, Palestinians have massed along the border with Israel to call for a return to the lands from which their families were displaced in 1948.

Of 10,511 protesters treated since that day in the enclave’s hospitals and field clinics, 6,392 were shot in the legs with live ammunition or rubber bullets, Associated Press said.

Israeli snipers have also killed 175 on the border.

At least 220 Palestinians have been killed since March in attacks including air strikes and tank fire.

A Palestinian sniper killed one Israeli soldier in that time.

Rights groups and Gazan medics say the number of wounded is so overwhelming that the territory’s medical services cannot cope with the fallout, leaving many untreated and at risk of infection or death. The territory is full of young Gazans on crutches, or with their legs bound together using metal frames.

“This many patients would overstretch the best healthcare systems in the world,” Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, Doctors Without Borders’ chief for the Palestinian territories, said last month. “In Gaza, it is a crushing blow.”

Some of those wounded said they had thrown stones at Israeli soldiers but many others said they were unarmed and not posing any threat.

Israel says it is acting proportionately, stopping border breaches by shooting to maim and not to kill. It holds the rulers of Gaza and Hamas responsible for the protests.

But rights groups say the open-fire policy breaches international law because it allows soldiers to lethally shoot protesters who pose no mortal threat to them.

Gaza’s health system has been battered by three wars between Hamas and Israel since 2008 and an Israeli siege that has squeezed the territory’s land crossings, imports and exports and its coastline.

The Health Ministry said it had performed 94 amputations, 82 of them legs. If wounds are left untreated, many more will face amputation. The wave of casualties on the Gaza border has coincided with anger at the policies of US President Donald Trump, who moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, effectively recognising the disputed city as Israel’s capital.

Anger has also been stoked by the dire economic situation that has left the territory with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, especially for young people.

The UN has warned that the territory will become unlivable by 2020 unless significant changes are made.

Exacerbating the situation is a dispute between Hamas and

The enclave’s health system has been battered by three wars between Hamas and Israel since 2008

the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which had suspended salaries for thousands of workers.

Qatar paid millions of dollars that was delivered by agents passing through Israel for almost 30,000 Gazan civil servants. The intervention angered officials in Ramallah after the deal agreed to with Israel sidelined the internationally recognised Palestinian government.

The weekly protests have continued despite wintry weather. Hamas has maintained the rallies, reducing their strength when signs of a truce with Israel are close or Tel Aviv takes steps to ease the blockade.