News / Palestine

Israeli forces injure 78 Palestinians, detain 106 others in one week: UN

Saturday, 21 May 2016 8:42 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 21 May 2016 8:43 AM ]

A Palestinian protester carries an injured fellow protester during clashes with Israeli forces outside the compound of the Israeli Ofer Prison near the central West Bank city of Beitunia, April 29, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says more than six dozen Palestinians have sustained injuries and over 100 others been arrested during clashes with Israeli military forces in the occupied territories over the past week.

The UN body, in a report published on Friday, said that at least 78 Palestinians, among them 32 children, were wounded in skirmishes across the West Bank between May 10 and 16. It said the majority of them were injured during a demonstration to mark the 68th anniversary of the creation of Israel known as Nakba Day (the Day of the Catastrophe).

Every year on May 15, Palestinians all over the world hold demonstrations to mark Nakba Day, which marks the anniversary of the forcible eviction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland by Israelis in 1948.

More than 760,000 Palestinians — now estimated to number nearly five million with their descendants — were driven out of their homes on May 14, 1948.

The OHCHA report further said that tear gas canisters fired by Israeli troopers set some 30 trees on fire and triggered a light fire in the northern West Bank town of Kafr Qaddum, located 13 kilometers (eight miles) west of Nablus, in the West Bank. A section of a house also burned in the town of Kafr ad-Dik, located 9.5 kilometers (5.9 miles) west of Salfit.

Israeli forces also burned some 250 acres of land planted with olive trees in the southern West Bank town of Beit Awwa, located 22 kilometers (13.6 miles) west of al-Khalil (Hebron).

Israeli forces arrest a Palestinian man during controls at the Damascus Gate in the Old City of al-Quds (Jerusalem), February 16, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Additionally, Israeli soldiers arrested 106 Palestinians in different areas of the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem) during the mentioned period.

The occupied territories have been the scene of heightened tensions since August 2015, when Israel imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East al-Quds.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in Islam after Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina.

More than 210 Palestinians, including children and women, have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since October 2015. Some 30 Israelis have also been killed since then.

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