A Palestinian teenager has died of his wounds sustained during weekend confrontations with Israeli military forces along the fence that separates the besieged Gaza Strip from the Israeli-occupied territories.
Palestinian medical sources said 12-year-old Omar Hasan Abu an-Neel was hit in the head during protests in the area of Malka, east of Gaza City, last week.
The teenager was taken to a nearby hospital, where he underwent surgery.
He remained in a critical condition at the intensive care unit until he succumbed to his serious wounds early on Saturday.
Israeli gunfire wounded at least 41 Palestinians, including two critically, on August 20.
Among the two Palestinians critically injured was a 13-year-old boy who was shot in the head, Gaza’s health ministry said.
It described most of the other injuries as moderate, including gunshots to limbs, backs, and abdomens.
The Israeli military said hundreds of demonstrators approached one area of the fence in northern Gaza and attempted to climb over it. It said troops fired tear gas and live rounds at the protesters.
The injuries came during a Gaza protest organized by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions in support of Jerusalem al-Quds, where Israeli forces frequently raided the al-Aqsa Mosque compound – the third-holiest site for Muslims – during the holy month of Ramadan, wounding hundreds of Palestinians.
The raids prompted Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip to respond to acts of aggression and fire retaliatory rockets into Israeli-occupied territories.
The Israeli army then launched a devastating 11-day war on the besieged Palestinian coastal enclave that killed at least 260 Palestinians, including 66 children.
UNICEF: 9 Palestinian children killed, 556 injured in two months
Meanwhile, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Israeli forces killed nine Palestinian children and injured 556 others between May 7 and July 31 in the occupied al-Quds. Israeli troops also arrested at least 170 Palestinian children during the period.
The UN agency warned in a new report released on Thursday that it will not be able to resume its operations to support the Palestinian children due to a severe budget deficit.
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The UNICEF noted that the Israeli military targeted 116 private kindergartens and damaged 140 public school buildings during last May’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
Moreover, Israeli warplanes struck 41 schools affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The UNICEF report emphasized that, during the recent Israeli aggression, the need to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip stood at $47 million, and the UN agency was short of some $33 million.
The UNICEF report also pointed to the coronavirus pandemic in the occupied Palestinian territories, noting that there were 345,702 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, half of which were women and 12% were children under the age of 18.
