A young Palestinian man has been shot dead by Israeli occupation forces at the border fence east of Khan Yunis, in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to medical sources.
Palestinian media reports said the Israeli soldiers stationed at the Gaza border opened fire at protesters and killed a 25-year-old youth from Bani Suhayia, east of Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, on Tuesday evening.
The victim was identified as Yousef Salem Radwan who was shot in the head. At least nine others were injured, one of them critical.
Separately, two others were injured from live bullets east of Jabalya in the north of the besieged enclave and many others suffered from suffocation after inhaling tear gas fired by the Israeli soldiers.
The protests at the Gaza border have been taking place for several days against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israeli jails and the repeated desecration of al-Aqsa Mosque by extremist Israeli settlers.
This came as Israeli forces brutally assaulted Muslim worshipers at one of the main entrances to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Old City of al-Quds.
The assault took place as the occupation soldiers beat up three worshipers, including an elderly man and an elderly woman, near Bab as-Silsila (the Chain Gate) on Sunday morning.
Earlier in the day, Israeli occupation troops intensified their presence around the al-Aqsa Mosque complex, restricting the access of Muslim worshipers to the sacred site and preventing the entry of Palestinian citizens.
They also allowed scores of Israeli settlers to enter the compound in separate groups.
The Jordan-run Islamic Waqf Department, which is in charge of al-Aqsa Mosque affairs, said in a statement that Israeli forces had permitted the provocative settler incursion.
The regime soldiers also assaulted Muslim worshipers and tried to forcibly evacuate them from the al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard, it noted.
Israeli settler incursions into al-Aqsa Mosque and violence against Palestinians have been on the rise since the far-right extremist cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office last December.
This is while only Muslims are allowed to pray in the al-Aqsa Mosque complex under a status quo arrangement originally reached more than a century ago. Non-Muslim visitors are allowed visits at certain times and only to certain areas.
Mohammad Hamadeh, the spokesman for the Hamas branch in occupied al-Quds, recently emphasized that the break-ins into the al-Aqsa are a continuation of the occupiers’ acts of aggression. He also stressed that the Palestinian resistance would go on until the decline and elimination of the usurping regime.
