12 Palestinians injured by Israeli army fire in Gaza

By Mohamed Majed

GAZA CITY (AA) – At least 12 Palestinian protestors were wounded on Monday by shots fired by the Israeli army in various locations near the eastern borders of the besieged Gaza Strip as marches continue for the fourth day in a row, the Palestinian Health ministry said.

Palestinian Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement Monday that the medical teams described the wounds of the injured as "medium".

He pointed out that the staff of his ministry dealt with dozens of cases of suffocation as a result of inhaling tear gas used to disperse Palestinian marches by the Israeli army.

The Israeli army fired live bullets, rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at Palestinian demonstrators near the border fence over the Great March of Return, the Anadolu Agency correspondent reported.

For the fourth day in a row, dozens of Palestinians gathered near the fence separating the Gaza Strip and Israel as part of their participation in the Great March of Return to mark the 42nd anniversary of the Land Day.

On Friday, tens of thousands of Gazans had converged on the strip’s roughly 45-kilometer-long eastern border with Israel to reaffirm their right to return to their ancestral homes in historical Palestine.

Friday’s rallies were the start of a six-week protest that culminates on May 15, the day the Palestinians call as “Nakba”, or “Catastrophe”, when Israel was created.

The demonstrators are demanding that Palestinian refugees be allowed the right of return to towns and villages which their families fled from, or were driven out of, when the state of Israel was created in 1948.

The Land Day, is an annual Palestinian commemoration of the deaths of six Arab Israeli citizens killed by Israeli forces in 1976, during demonstrations against government land confiscations in northern Israel.