Israeli troops kill 4 Palestinians during protest

GAZA CITY: Israeli soldiers firing from across a border fence killed four Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy, and wounded more than 150 others, health officials said, as several thousand people in blockaded Gaza staged a fourth round of weekly protests on the border with Israel.

Huge black plumes of smoke from burning tyres engulfed the border area. Some of the activists threw stones towards the fence or flew kites with flaming rags dangling from their tails.

The latest deaths on Friday brought to 32 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops in protests since late March.

More than 1 600 people have been wounded by live rounds in the past three weeks, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The rising Palestinian casualty toll signalled that Israel’s military is sticking to its open-fire rules despite international criticism of the use of lethal force against unarmed protesters. Israel says it is defending its border, and alleges the political organisation Hamas, which rules Gaza, uses protests as cover for attacks.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, said in a letter to the UN Security Council on Friday that Israeli forces continued demonstrating the “cruelty of their occupation machine, responding to the calls of unarmed civilians for freedom and justice with brutal and lethal force”. He said one of the latest victims was a 25-yearold disabled man. Israeli soldiers are positioned on the other side of the border fence, including snipers taking cover behind earthen berms, and none have been hurt.

Turnout for the marches has fluctuated, with the biggest showing on March 30, but Friday’s crowd appeared to have been somewhat larger than the one the previous week. The marches are part of what organisers, led by Hamas, have billed as an escalating showdown with Israel, to culminate in a mass march on May 15.

The top Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Friday that people should get ready for large crowds spilling across the border that day. – Ap/african News Agency (ANA)