Seven Palestinians Killed in Gaza Border Clash

Gaza City : Seven Palestinians, including a 14-year-old, were killed by Israeli fire in new clashes along the Gaza border yesterday, the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled strip said. Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra told AFP that Mohammed Al Houm, 14, and Iyad Al Shaar, 18, were shot in separate incidents “by live ammunition from the (Israeli) occupation forces”. He later reported five more Palestinians had been shot dead, without immediately identifying them.

The Israeli army said some 20,000 had gathered at multiple sites along the border. It said the protesters hurled “grenades and explosive devices in several different locations”. It said troops were firing “in accordance with standard operating procedures” but did not go into specific cases. Palestinians have been protesting at least weekly along the Gaza border since March. At least 192 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in that time, the majority during border protests. Smaller numbers have been hit by airstrikes or tank fire. 

The protests are demanding the right of Palestinian refugees to be allowed to return to their homes, now in Israel. Israel says any such mass return would mean the end of it as a Jewish state and accuses Gaza’s rulers Hamas of orchestrating the protests. More than two million people are packed into Gaza, whose economic plight is a focus of so-far fruitless US-led efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, stalled since 2014.