Violent clashes erupted on Saturday between Palestinian youths and the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) at the northern entrance to Bethlehem city after school students marched against the US declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Local sources reported that the IOF soldiers fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at the protesters who responded by throwing stones and empty bottles.
They added that a Palestinian student was arrested and many others suffered from tear gas inhalation during the clashes.
Other confrontations broke out between Palestinian youths and the IOF soldiers in Bab al-Zawiya area in al-Khalil on Saturday morning.
The PIC reporter said that five Palestinians choked on tear gas and a sixth was transferred to a local hospital after being injured with a rubber bullet in the head.
Meanwhile in the southern Gaza Strip school students participated in large numbers in demonstrations organized by the Islamic Bloc Hamas’s student wing in Khan Younis in protest at the US president Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Head of the Islamic Bloc in Khan Younis Emad Eslim in a statement to the PIC condemned Trump’s decision and expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people in Jerusalem.
Media sources reported that hundreds of Palestinians on Saturday marched toward the border fence in different areas east of the Gaza Strip.
Local sources said that the IOF soldiers stationed behind the fence showered the protesters with live bullets and tear gas canisters.
In the same context spokesman for Gaza’s Ministry of Health Ashraf al-Qedra said that a 35-year-old Palestinian woman was moderately injured in the shoulder after being shot by the IOF east of Khuza’a town in the southern Gaza Strip.
Four Palestinians have been killed and 170 others injured in the protests that started on Friday and were followed by several airstrikes on three resistance sites belonging to al-Qassam Brigades Hamas’s armed wing in the besieged Gaza Strip.
