Israeli forces open fire on Gaza protesters, kill Palestinian teen

Israeli regime forces have reportedly killed a Palestinian teenager and injured 25 others when they opened fire on protesters taking part in a weekly march in the besieged Gaza Strip in solidarity with the West Bank village of Khan al-Ahmar.

In a statement issued on Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza identified the killed protester as 15-year-old Uthman Rami Hals.

An earlier announcement said at least 25 people had been wounded by Israeli gun fire on peaceful demonstrators protesting the Tel Aviv regime’s policy of expelling local Palestinian residents from the village in the occupied West Bank.

The victims of the Friday attack on Palestinians marching near the buffer zone, which separates the Gaza enclave from the Israeli-occupied territories, included a woman, according to local reports.

Residents of Khan al-Ahmar, located just outside Jerusalem al-Quds, are resisting an Israeli scheme to demolish Palestinian homes and buildings there.

Palestinians in Gaza have been rallying every Friday since March 30 as a part of a peaceful campaign known as the Great March of Return.

So far, Israeli forces have killed more than 135 Palestinians, including over a dozen children, and injured hundreds of others during the rallies.

In a separate incident, a number of Palestinian protesters choked on tear gas at a noontime rally on Friday in clashes with Israeli troops in the town of Kafr Qaddum, east of the West Bank city of Qalqilya.

According to a report by the Gaza-based Palestinian Information Center, Israeli military patrols brutally attacked a weekly march in Kafr Qaddum.

The report further stated that Palestinian photojournalist Nidal Eshtiyeh, who works for a Chinese TV Channel, also sustained rubber bullet wounds in his leg as he engaged in press coverage of the march.

Protests along the Gaza fence since March 30 have led to clashes with Israeli military and police forces. Palestinian protesters demand their right of return to their homeland.

On May 14, Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians who had gathered near the Gaza fence to protest the inauguration of the US embassy in Jerusalem al-Quds. Over 60 Palestinians were shot dead and more than 2,700 were wounded by Israeli snipers who had been positioned along the fence.

Every year on May 15, Palestinians all over the world hold protest rallies to commemorate the day which marks the anniversary of the forcible Israeli eviction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said children in the Gaza Strip are the main victims of Israeli atrocities, where some 1.8 million people are living under a crippling blockade.

Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, causing a decline in living standards as well as unprecedented unemployment and poverty.

Israel has also launched several wars on the Palestinian sliver, the last of which began in early July 2014 and ended in late August the same year. The Israeli military aggression killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians and injured over 11,100 others.

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