Gaza City, Aug. 25, (dpa/GNA) – The Islamist Palestinian organization Hamas, as well as other groups in the Gaza Strip, have called for protests at the border fence with Israel later on Wednesday against the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
According to official reports, 41 Palestinians and one Israeli border police officer were injured in confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers on Saturday.
The Israeli air force later attacked Hamas targets in Gaza, according to Israeli military sources.
The clashes in the border zone on Saturday were the most violent since 2019, when Palestinians held the last of their weekly protests against the blockade and for the Palestinian right to return to homes that they had fled during the conflict when Israel was founded in 1948.
In May, the Israeli military and Palestinian militants engaged in an 11-day armed conflict in which 13 people were killed in Israel, and 255 people died in the Gaza Strip, according to official figures given by the Israeli and Palestinian authorities respectively.
Since 2007, Israel has kept the Gaza Strip under a tight blockade, forcing Gaza to rely on neighbouring Egypt for food and medicine. Just over two million people live in the Gaza Strip, most of them in very poor conditions, according to aid organizations.
GNA