(MENAFN- QNA) Scores of Palestinians were injured after Israeli soldiers fired tear gas, rubber and live bullets at the demonstrators while marking the Nakba Day anniversary throughout the occupied West Bank cities and Gaza Strip.
Clashes took place in several neighborhoods of Occupied Jerusalem and near Ramallah and farther north in Nablus, after a new Israeli cabinet took office and as Palestinians marked 67 years since the Nakba, or "catastrophe," that befell them when Israel was established in 1948.
At a demonstration outside Ofer military prison near the West Bank administrative center of Ramallah, dozens of protesters stoned soldiers who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
In separate clashes in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, rubber bullets and live fire by soldiers wounded at least 10 Palestinians, security sources and witnesses said.
The Israeli army confirmed the clashes, but denied that live rounds were fired. More than 1,000 settlers from nearby Jewish settlements were bused into the city to visit Joseph's Tomb early in the day, and soldiers blocked off roads leading to the pilgrimage site, Palestinian witnesses and security sources said.
Palestinians protested, some throwing stones, before clashes with the army erupted. In Kafr Qaddum, four young men were injured after Israeli soldiers shot live ammunition from all directions and several rounds of rubber coated steel bullets, tear gas and stun grenades.
Before the prayer had started, which end usually marks the beginning of the demonstration, soldiers attacked the gathered crowd with the chemical-laced water from the skunk truck. About 200 protesters marched up towards the closed road and were chanting words of freedom. 67 years later, the Nakba is still going on. They were soon met with rubber coated steel bullets and more skunk water.
In Gaza, which is still recovering nine months after last summer's devastating war between Israel and de facto rulers Hamas, Israeli troops on the border fired live rounds at Nakba Day protesters, wounding four, the enclave's interior ministry medical spokesperson said.
Three demonstrators were hit at a demonstration staged by dozens of people near the border fence east of Gaza City, and a fourth was shot at a similar protest near Khan Younis in the south, Ashraf al-Qudra said. The Israeli army said it had fired at the "lower extremities" of five people who approached the border fence, after warning them not to come any closer.
After Israel's establishment in 1948, more than 760,000 Palestinians - estimated today to number around 5.5 million with their descendants - were violently expelled from their homes, with the catastrophe marked every May 15.
For the Palestinians, the right to return to homes they fled or were forced out of is a prerequisite for any peace agreement with Israel, but it is a demand that Israel has rejected out of hand.
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