For more than a week the Gaza border with Israel has been enflamed by violence after Israeli forces opened fire on a protest march on March 30

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories – The Gaza Strip, run by Islamist movement Hamas, is a poverty-stricken and overcrowded Palestinian coastal enclave.

For more than a week the Gaza border with Israel has been enflamed by violence after Israeli forces opened fire on a protest march on March 30, killing 19 Palestinians and wounding hundreds.

It was the bloodiest day in the enclave since a 2014 war, and since then 11 more Palestinians have been killed in confrontations with Israeli forces.

Situated on the Mediterranean coast, between Israel and Egypt, Gaza is home to around two million Palestinians.

They live in a cramped area of just 362 square kilometres (140 square miles), making it one of the most densely populated territories on the planet.

After the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949 and the formation of the Jewish state of Israel, Gaza came under Egyptian administration, but was never annexed.

Israel seized the territory from Egypt during the June 1967 Six-Day War.

On September 12, 2005, Israel pulled out all of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in a unilateral move which ended 38 years of occupation.

In the summer of 2006, following the capture of a soldier by militants from Hamas, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza which was tightened a year later after the Islamists forcibly ousted troops loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah faction.

Since the ousting of Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the only entrance to Gaza not controlled by Israel, Rafah, has been almost completely closed by Cairo.

According to the World Bank, Gaza's GDP losses caused by the blockade are estimated at more than 50 percent.

The Gaza Strip has almost no industry, and it suffers from a chronic lack of water and fuel.

Unemployment stands at 45 percent and more than two thirds of the population depends on humanitarian aid.

A reconciliation deal in October 2017 between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority generates tentative hope that conditions in the enclave will improve.

But the discussions are at a standstill with both sides refusing to take responsibility for the failure.

In January 2018, the UN Middle East peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov warned that the Gaza Strip was on the verge of "full collapse".

A meeting of donors in March greenlighted a project to build a desalination plant in Gaza. More than 95 perce of water in the enclave is unfit for drinking due to overpumping of groundwater.

On February 27-March 3, 2008, Israel carried out operation "Hot Winter" following the death of an Israeli from rocket fire from Gaza. More than 120 Palestinians were killed.

Unrest continued – Gaza rocket fire and Israeli attacks – in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed until a truce was concluded in June.

On December 27, 2008 Israel launched a vast air offensive – "Operation Cast Lead" – in a bid to put an end to Palestinian rocket fire.

A ceasefire came into force on January 18, 2009 to end the Israeli operation, in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.

Beginning November 14, 2012, Israel launched "Operation Pillar of Defence" with a missile strike that killed top Hamas commander Ahmed Jaabari. In the ensuring eight-day flare-up, 177 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed before an Egypt-brokered truce took effect.

On July 8, 2014, Israel launched "Operation Protective Edge" against Gaza with the aim of ending rocket fire and destroying smuggling and militant tunnels dug from the enclave. The war left 2,251 dead on the Palestinian side and 74 on the Israeli side.– Rappler.com</s>Updated 4.30pm: A Palestinian man has been killed by Israeli gunfire and 40 people have been injured in protests on the Gaza-Israel border, health officials said.

Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said the man was killed near the Gaza town of Khan Younis.

He was said to have been killed by a shot to the head.

Mr al-Kidra said 40 people were injured, five of them seriously, but did not provide a breakdown of the types of injuries.

The casualties were the first as new violent incidents erupted on Friday along the Gaza-Israel border fence.

The latest death brings to 23 the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza over the past week, including 17 protesters.

In the most recent protest Palestinian protesters burned tyres, sending black smoke billowing into the air and prompting Israeli troops to fire tear gas and live fire.

Today's march was the second in what Gaza's Hamas rulers said would be several weeks of protests against a decade-old border blockade of the territory.

Israel has accused the Islamic militant group of using the protests as a cover for attacking Israel's border, and has warned that those approaching the fence put their lives at risk.

On Friday, thousands of Palestinians streamed to five tent encampments organisers had set up at various points several hundred metres from the border fence.

In one camp near the border community of Khuzaa, activists moved closer to the fence and torched large piles of tyres, engulfing the area in black smoke meant to shield them from Israeli snipers.

Troops on the other side of the fence responded with live fire, tear gas and rubber-coated steel pellets. Water cannons trained a stream of thick liquid at the fence.

Within minutes, several young men with gunshot wounds began arriving at a field clinic at the camp.

Mohammed Ashour, 20, who had been among the first to set tyres on fire, had been shot in the right arm. He rested on a stretcher placed on the ground.

"We came here because we want dignity," he said before paramedics carried him to an ambulance to be transported to the strip's main hospital.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, portrayed the protests as riots, and said Hamas organisers were trying to use them as a diversion to "open up the fence and then to insert terrorists into Israel".

Israel has drawn sharp criticism for its open-fire orders along the border.

The UN human rights office said it had indications that Israeli forces used "excessive force" against protesters last week.

Rights groups have branded orders permitting the use of lethal force against unarmed protesters as unlawful. A leading Israeli rights group, B'Tselem, issued a rare appeal to Israeli soldiers this week to refuse "grossly illegal" open-fire orders.

Lt Col Conricus said snipers are used "sparingly" and only against those that pose a "significant threat".

As well as the protesters, six other deaths were three gunmen killed in what Israel said were attempts to attack the border and three men who were struck by Israeli tank fire.</s>Palestinians killed in conflict with Israeli forces are often wrapped in their national or party flags, but there was something different about Yasser Murtaja's body ahead of his Saturday burial.

Resting on the journalist's chest was a flak jacket marked PRESS, possibly the one he was wearing the day before when he was shot dead at the Gaza border, apparently by an Israeli sniper.

Dozens of journalists, many fighting back tears, followed the body of the 30-year-old father as it was carried from the hospital to his home late Saturday morning.

His serene face exposed and body wrapped in the Palestinian flag, the flak jacket lay on his lifeless chest.

Murtaja was one of nine Palestinians killed as Israeli troops shot at thousands of stone-throwing protesters in five spots along the border Friday, a week after 19 people were killed during similar demonstrations.

His killing will likely increase calls for Israel to investigate the deaths, with photos taken at the scene indicating he was wearing a press vest when he was shot.

Murtaja, who was well known in the local media scene, worked for the relatively small Gaza-based Al-Ain media production company, specialising in documentaries.

His brother Mutasim, also a journalist who was with him Friday, said Murtaja was photographing a number of protesters burning tyres when he was shot.

"Yasser went forward to take the true pictures to show the world," he told AFP.

"Then the bullet hit him in his stomach."

The Israeli army said in a statement it "does not intentionally target journalists."

"The circumstances in which journalists were allegedly hit by Israeli Defence Force (IDF) fire are not familiar to the IDF, and are being looked into."

- 'Up in the air' -

Murtaja recently worked on a documentary about the 2014 war between Israel and Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas, which was shown on Al-Jazeera Arabic.

But he also focused on other topics, where frequently used drones, which seem to have been something of an escape from life in Gaza.

The Palestinian enclave has been under an Israeli blockade for a decade, while Egypt has all but sealed its border in recent years as well -- leaving the Strip's two million residents effectively locked in.

"My name is Yasser Murtaja, I am 30 years old, live in Gaza City and have never travelled," the journalist said in a March post on Facebook accompanying one of his drone photos from high above Gaza.

"Today I take a shot and I am up in the air, not on the ground."

Hind Khoudary, a friend and fellow journalist, said he was "a beautiful person both inside and out".

"His reputation with everyone was as someone very kind," she added, tears welling in her eyes.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, whose group Israel and the United States consider a terrorist organisation, attended the funeral and eulogised Murtaja.

The journalist's friends and family insisted he was independent of any political party.

Israel has accused Hamas of orchestrating the protests and using them as an excuse to carry out attacks.

Haniya often attends funerals of those killed in violence with Israel, even if they are not Hamas.

Al-Ain's office in Gaza City, were Murtaja worked, was closed Saturday, but Khoudary said the death made journalists feel they were "all targets".

"He was only covering what was happening."</s>Israeli troops shoot dead 10 Palestinian protesters, including one journalist, and wound at least 200 along the Israel-Gaza border, Palestinian medical officials say, raising the death toll to 32 in the week-long disturbances.

Israeli troops have shot dead nine Palestinian protesters and wounded at least 200 along the Israel-Gaza border, Palestinian medical officials say, raising the death toll to 31 in the week-long disturbances.

They said the demonstrators, including two teenage boys aged 16 and 17, were killed at protest sites along the frontier during a round of daily demonstrations that began on March 30 and are known as "The Great March of Return".

Gaza health officials said a well-known Palestinian journalist also died from a gunshot wound sustained while covering the demonstrations.

They said Yasser Murtaja was among two people to die overnight after being shot on Friday. Their deaths raised Friday's death toll to nine.

Murtaja was shot in the southern town of Khuzaa, which was engulfed in thick black smoke caused by burning tires set alight by demonstrators.

He was over 100 metres from the border, wearing a flak jacket marked "press" and holding his camera when he was shot.

The Israeli military has said it fired only at "instigators" involved in violence. It had no immediate comment.

The day of violence, which saw bigger Palestinian crowds than in recent days but not as large as when the demonstration began last Friday, calmed down as night descended.

The protesters, including Palestinian refugees and their descendants seeking to regain homes in what is now Israel that were lost during its 1948-49 independence war, have set up tent encampments a few hundred metres inside Gaza.

Large groups of youths ventured much closer to the no-go zone along the border, risking live fire from Israeli troops to roll burning tyres at the barrier and throw stones.

"I have two kids, a boy and a girl, and if I die, God will take care of them."

Refugees comprise most of the two million population of Israeli-blockaded Gaza, which is ruled by the Islamist militant movement Hamas.

With black tyre smoke and Israeli tear gas rising into the air, Palestinian youths used T-shirts, cheap medical masks and perfume to try and protect themselves.

Israel also tried to douse burning tyres with fire hoses from its side of the border.

The Israeli military has stationed sharpshooters on its side of the frontier to deter Palestinians from trying to break through the fence into Israeli territory.

Israel said many of those killed were militants.

'Demonstrators posing no immediate threat to life'

David Keyes, an Israeli Government spokesman, accused Hamas of having instigated violent protests along the border.

"This is a travesty for the Palestinian people that the Hamas Government is encouraging its people to attack Israel, it is encouraging its people to commit acts of violence," he said.

Hamas' Gaza leader, Yehya Al-Sinwar, spoke at a protest encampment to praise those who turned out to confront the "enemy who besieges us".

He said the demonstrations would continue, telling the crowds: "We will uproot the borders, we will pluck out their hearts, and we will pray in Jerusalem."

Earlier in the day, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem urged protesters to keep the rallies peaceful.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who holds little sway in Gaza, condemned what he described as Israel's "acts of killing and oppression conducted … against the peaceful uprising".

Seventeen of the now 27 Palestinian dead were killed by Israeli gunfire on the first day of protests a week ago, medics said.

The deaths drew international criticism of Israel's response, which human rights groups said involved live fire against demonstrators posing no immediate threat to life.

"We are saying that Israel has obligations to ensure that excessive force is not employed," UN human rights spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell said in Geneva.

Israel has said it was doing what it must to defend its border and that its troops had been responding with riot dispersal means and fire "in accordance with the rules of engagement".

The Israeli Government has ruled out any right of return for Palestinian refugees, fearing that the country would lose its Jewish majority.

"We condemn leaders and protesters who call for violence or who send protesters — including children — to the fence, knowing that they may be injured or killed," said President Donald Trump's Middle East peace envoy, Jason Greenblatt.

The protest action is set to wind up on May 15, when Palestinians mark the "Naqba", or "Catastrophe" — when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven out of their homes during violence that culminated in war in May 1948 between the newly created state of Israel and its Arab neighbours.</s>Palestinians carry a demonstrator wounded by Israeli occupation forces during a protest on the Gaza-Israel border, east of the Jabalia refugee camps, in the northern Gaza Strip, on Friday (AFP photo)

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — The Gaza Strip, run by Islamist resistance movement Hamas, is a poverty-stricken and overcrowded Palestinian coastal enclave.

For more than a week the Gaza border with Israel has been the site of protests where Israeli occupation forces opened fire on March 30, killing 19 Palestinians and wounding hundreds.

It was the bloodiest day in the enclave since a 2014 war, and since then 11 more Palestinians have been killed, including a journalist, by occupation forces while demonstrating for the right of return of Palestinian refugees along the border.

Situated on the Mediterranean coast, between Israel and Egypt, Gaza is home to around 2 million Palestinians.

They live in a cramped area of just 362sq.m, making it one of the most densely populated territories on the planet.

After the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949 and the formation of the state of Israel, Gaza came under Egyptian administration, but was never annexed.

Israel seized the territory from Egypt during the June 1967 War.

On September 12, 2005, Israel pulled out all of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in a unilateral move, which ended 38 years of occupation.

In the summer of 2006, following the capture of an occupation force soldier by Hamas, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza which was tightened a year later after the resistance group forcibly ousted troops loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fateh faction.

Since the ousting of Egypt’s Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the only entrance to Gaza not controlled by Israel, Rafah, has been almost completely closed by Cairo.

According to the World Bank, Gaza’s GDP losses caused by the Israeli blockade are estimated at more than 50 per cent.

The Gaza Strip has almost no industry, and it suffers from a chronic lack of water and fuel.

Unemployment stands at 45 per cent and more than two thirds of the population depends on humanitarian aid.

A reconciliation deal in October 2017 between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority generates tentative hope that conditions in the enclave will improve.

But the discussions are at a standstill with both sides refusing to take responsibility for the failure.

In January 2018, the UN Middle East peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov warned that the Gaza Strip was on the verge of “full collapse”.

A meeting of donors in March greenlighted a project to build a desalination plant in Gaza. More than 95 per cent of water in the enclave is unfit for drinking due to overpumping of groundwater.

On February 27-March 3, 2008, Israel carried out operation “Hot Winter” following the death of an Israeli from rocket fire from Gaza. More than 120 Palestinians were killed.

Unrest continued — Gaza rocket fire and Israeli attacks — in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed until a truce was concluded in June.

On December 27, 2008 Israel launched a vast air offensive — “Operation Cast Lead” — in a bid to put an end to Hamas rocket fire.

A ceasefire came into force on January 18, 2009 to end the Israeli operation, in which 1,400 Palestinians and only 13 Israelis were killed.

Beginning November 14, 2012, Israel launched “Operation Pillar of Defence” with a missile strike that killed top Hamas commander Ahmed Jaabari. In the ensuring eight-day flare-up, 177 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed before an Egypt-brokered truce took effect.

On July 8, 2014, Israel launched “Operation Protective Edge” against Gaza with the aim of ending rocket fire and destroying smuggling and tunnels dug from the enclave. The war left 2,251 dead on the Palestinian side and 74 on the Israeli side.</s>GAZA – A Palestinian journalist died on Saturday after being wounded by Israeli fire on Friday while covering deadly protests along the Israel-Gaza border, health officials said.

Yaser Murtaja, 30, a cameraman for Palestinian Ain Media, was the 29th Palestinian killed in the week-long protests.

Photos showed Murtaja lying wounded on a stretcher wearing a navy-blue protective vest marked ‘PRESS’ in large black capital letters. Health officials said a live bullet had penetrated the side of his abdomen and he succumbed to his wounds in hospital.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the army was looking into the incident and could not comment further at this stage.

The daily protests, dubbed “The Great March of Return”, began on March 30 along the Israel-Gaza frontier, reviving a longstanding demand for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to towns and villages from which their families fled, or were driven out, when the state of Israel was created.

Israel has stationed sharpshooters to stop attempts by Palestinians to breach the border or sabotage the security fence.

Freelance photographer Ashraf Abu Amra told Reuters he was next to Murtaja, whom he said was wearing a helmet and protective vest. Abu Amra said they were both clearly marked as journalists.

“We were filming as youths torched tyres. We were about 250 meters from the fence,” said Abu Amra. “Israeli forces opened fire and injuries began. Yaser and I ran to film when suddenly Yaser fell to the ground.

“I screamed to him ‘Yaser are you alright?’. He didn’t respond and there was blood on the ground underneath him. I knew it was a bad injury and people carried him away,” said Abu Amra.

Video footage showed Murtaja being carried to an ambulance with crowds around and black smoke rising from where protesters had set tyres alight, east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Murtaja was married with a two-year-old son. Hundreds of mourners, among them many journalists, attended his funeral on Saturday.

His body was covered with a Palestinian flag and his press jacket laid beside him on the stretcher as it was carried through the streets of Gaza City to his home for a last farewell.

“I made him breakfast, he ate quickly, he was in a hurry to go to work,” said Murtaja’s mother, Yusra, recounting the morning of the protest.

“I thought he would recover from his injury, I didn’t expect his death, but God has chosen him as a martyr, thank God,” she said, sitting on the ground as mourners came to the house to pay their respects.

Israel Radio, citing an unnamed source in Gaza, said Murtaja had been operating a camera drone on Friday. Abu Amra and two other Palestinian journalists said Murtaja was not operating a camera drone when shot.

 Murtaja, on his Facebook page, had posted two aerial photos taken at the border in the past week. It was unclear if he had taken them himself.

At least three other journalists were wounded on Friday in other locations, Gaza officials said. There have been no Israeli casualties in the protests.

Israel’s response to the protests has drawn international criticism, with human rights groups saying it involved live fire against demonstrators posing no immediate threat to life.

Israel says it is doing what it must to defend its border and its troops have been responding with riot dispersal means and fire “in accordance with the rules of engagement”.

Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, says the protests demanding the right of return of refugees will continue.

The Israeli government has ruled out any right of return, fearing the country would lose its Jewish majority.

Israel says many of the dead were militants and that Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the West, is using the protests as cover to launch attacks along the border and ignite the area, while putting Gaza’s civilians at risk.</s>An image of clashes from last Friday

Palestinians burned tyres and threw stones at Israeli occupation soldiers over the border fence, who responded with tear gas and live fire, the correspondents said.

One person appeared to have been shot east of Gaza City, an AFP photographer on the scene said, but his condition was not immediately clear.

Hundreds of Palestinians were gathering at different places along the Gaza border as part of six weeks of protests calling for Palestinian refugees to be allowed to return to the lands they fled or were expelled from that are now inside Israeli occupation.

Nineteen Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded by gunfire from Israeli forces last Friday when a protest by tens of thousands led to clashes.</s>Israel and Hamas geared up Friday for another showdown on the Gaza-Israel border, amid concerns about renewed bloodshed after more than a dozen Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured by Israeli fire in a mass protest last week.

Friday's march is the second in what Gaza's Hamas rulers said would be several weeks of protests against a decade-old border blockade of the territory.

Activists plan to burn large numbers of tires Friday, in hopes that clouds of black smoke will block the view of Israeli snipers deployed on the other side of the border fence.

Israel has accused Hamas of trying to carry out border attacks under the cover of large protests and said it will prevent a breach of the fence at all costs.

Israel's defense minister has warned that protesters approaching the border fence endanger their lives, drawing condemnation from rights groups that said such seemingly broad open-fire rules are unlawful.

A leading Israeli rights group, B'Tselem, issued a rare appeal to Israeli soldiers to refuse "grossly illegal" orders to fire at unarmed protesters.

Last Friday, thousands of Gaza residents participated in a mass demonstration, many gathering in five tent encampments that had been set up from north to south along the narrow coastal strip's border with Israel, each at a distance of about several hundred meters from the fence. Smaller groups, mostly young men, rushed forward, throwing stones, hurling firebombs or burning tires and drawing Israeli fire.

In all, 22 Palestinians were killed in Gaza over the past week, among them 16 involved in last Friday's protests, according to Gaza health officials. This includes a 30-year-old who died on Friday of injuries sustained last week, the officials said.

The six other deaths included three gunmen killed in what Israel said were attempts to attack the border and three men who were struck by Israeli tank fire.

Last week's turnout was apparently driven by the organizational prowess of Hamas as well as the growing desperation of Gaza residents who live in what has been described as the world's largest open-air prison.

The crowd size was seen as a test for Hamas, a militant group that seized the territory in 2007 from its political rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Ahead of Friday's march, Hamas announced it would pay compensation to families of those killed or injured, ranging from $200 to $500 per injury and $3,000 per death.

Late Thursday, activists urged residents over loudspeakers mounted on vans touring the streets to show up for what they called the "Friday of Tires."

The idea of mass protests was initially floated by social media activists, but was later co-opted by Hamas, with the backing of smaller militant factions.

For Hamas, it's perhaps the last chance to break a border blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt since 2007, without having to succumb to demands that it disarm.

The blockade has made it increasingly difficult for Hamas to govern. It has also devastated Gaza's economy, made it virtually impossible for people to enter and exit the territory and left residents with just a few hours of electricity a day.

Hamas leaders billed the final protest, set for May 15, as the "Great March of Return" of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, implying they would try to enter Israel. But they stopped short of specifically threatening a mass breach of the border fence.

Israel has warned that it will not permit a breach of the fence and said it has a right to defend its sovereign border.

Military officials have said Hamas has used the protests as a cover for damaging the fence, planting explosives and, in one incident, opening fire on soldiers.

Israel argues that Hamas could have ended the suffering of Gaza's 2 million people by disarming and renouncing violence.

Hamas has refused to give up its weapons — even at the cost of derailing talks on getting Abbas to assume the burden of governing Gaza, seen by Israel and Egypt as a prerequisite for opening Gaza's borders.</s>Jeremy Corbyn has blasted the mainstream media for covering up Israel’s genocide of Palestinians living on the Gaza border.

In a message read out at a protest outside Downing Street, the Labour leader demanded that Prime Minister Theresa May support the UN’s call for an independent inquiry into the slaughter of 27 innocent Palestinians – who were shot to death by Israeli troops.

Independent.co.uk reports: Britain should also consider stopping the sale of arms to Israel that “could be used in violation of international law”, he said.

Mr Corbyn spoke out after at least nine more Palestinians were killed, and hundreds more injured, by Israeli gunfire, some reportedly shot in the head or upper body.

The latest deaths came a week after 18 Palestinians lost their lives when Israeli soldiers opened fire at similar demonstrations in support of a “right to return” to land lost to Israel in 1948.

The UN human rights spokeswoman, Elizabeth Throssell, has suggested the shootings could amount to wilful killing of civilians – a breach of the fourth Geneva Convention.

In his message, Mr Corbyn said: “The killing and wounding of yet more unarmed Palestinian protesters yesterday by Israeli forces in Gaza is an outrage.

“The majority of the people of the Gaza Strip are stateless refugees, subject to a decade-long blockade and the denial of basic human and political rights.

“More than two thirds are reliant on humanitarian assistance, with limited access to the most basic amenities, such as water and electricity.

“They have a right to protest against their appalling conditions and the continuing blockade and occupation of Palestinian land, and in support of their right to return to their homes and their right to self-determination.”

Mr Corbyn added that “firing live ammunition into crowds of unarmed civilians is illegal and inhumane and cannot be tolerated”.

“The silence from international powers with the responsibility of bringing a just settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict must end,” he added.

“The UK Government must support the UN secretary-general’s call for an independent international inquiry into the killing of protesters in Gaza and review the sale of arms that could be used in violation of international law.”

Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has said nothing since the first killings on 30 March, although his deputy, Alistair Burt, issued a statement saying he was “appalled by the deaths and injuries”. Mr Burt said: “There is an urgent need to establish the facts, including why such a volume of live fire was used and what role Hamas played in the violence.”

Israel came under pressure after a video showed a protester being shot in the back by an Israeli soldier as he walked away from the fence separating Gaza from Israel.

In other footage, Palestinians were shown being killed or wounded as they prayed, walked empty-handed towards the border fence, or simply held up a Palestinian flag.

According to reports in the Israeli media, the Israel Defence Forces’ rules of engagement allow live fire to be used against anyone who approaches the fence.

Justifying its response, the Israeli military said: “Several attempts have been made to damage and cross the security fence under the cover of the smokescreen created by the burning tyres that the rioters ignited.”</s>At least four Palestinian protesters were killed and 260 others injured, including an epa photographer, by Israeli security forces Friday as violent disturbances returned to the border area of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said.

The Health Ministry in Gaza Strip, an area de-facto administered by the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement, said among the dead were a 14-year-old boy and a 38-year-old man killed in the east and the south of the coastal enclave, respectively.
Israeli troops shoot dead ten Palestinians near the Israel–Gaza barrier, including a Palestinian journalist, as protests continue.