Gaza youth dies of injuries sustained during protests

GAZA CITY, Palestine

Palestinian youth in the Gaza Strip has succumbed to injuries sustained last Saturday while taking part in demonstrations near the fraught Gaza-Israel buffer zone.

In a statement, Gaza’s Health Ministry said that Fares Yousef Abu Hajras, 26, had died of wounds sustained Saturday near Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, where he was struck by Israeli army gunfire.

On Saturday, at least four Palestinians were killed -- and dozens more injured -- while staging rallies near the buffer zone, according to the Health Ministry.

Nearly 270 Palestinian demonstrators have been killed since Palestinians began holding regular demonstrations along the buffer zone in March of last year.

Demonstrators demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in historical Palestine from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.

They also demand an end to Israel’s 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.