3 Palestinians shot dead as Gaza protests resume
gaza — Israeli troops shot dead three Palestinians and wounded at least 618 others on Friday with live fire or tear gas used against protesters at the Gaza Strip border, medics said.
Israeli forces have killed at least 122 Palestinians in protests along the border since a campaign was launched on March 30 to demand the right to return to ancestral lands lost to Israel in the 1948 war of its creation, hospital officials say.
There have been no Israeli casualties from the more than two months of confrontations along the Gaza border. Israel has lost swathes of farmland and forests on its side of the border to blazes set by coal- or fuel-laden Palestinian kites.
The Palestinians killed on Friday were two adult men and a 15-year-old boy, medics said. Of the wounded, 120 were from live fire, they said.
Among those wounded with gunfire was an Agence France Presse photographer and a 23-year-old man who was on life support after a tear gas canister penetrated his face, medics said.
“We are not asking for the moon,” said Amer Abu Khalaf, a
We are not asking for the moon... The protest aimed to break the siege and have the world recognise our right to return Amer Abu Khalaf, a Palestinian student 20-year-old business administration student who took part in the protest, saying it aimed to “break the siege and have the world recognise our right to return”.
Israel has long refused to admit Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war or their millions of descendants, saying they should stay in a future Palestinian state. Statehood talks have been frozen since 2014.
The death toll from Israel’s measures against the Gaza protests have drawn international censure, though the United States has placed the blame on Hamas.
Two million Palestinians have sunk into poverty as Israel and Egypt, citing security needs, clamped down on Gaza’s borders. —
> Three Palestinian protesters were shot dead by Israeli troops.
> 618 other protesters sustained injuries in Israeli fire.
> 118 gazans have been killed and over 4,000 wounded by Israeli army in recent protests. > The Friday protest also marked the annual “Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day”.
> The mass protests have been aimed at a border blockade imposed by Israel in 2007.
> The marchers also demand ‘right of return’ for Palestinians expelled in 1948 war.