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Follow Us on TwitterIsraeli fire kills one Gazan 23Dec10 December 24, 2010
Staff at a local Palestinian hospital named the dead man as Salama Abu Hashish, 22, a shepherd, and said he had been shot in the back.
Adham Abu Selmiya, spokesman for the Hamas-run medical services in the Gaza Strip, said one of the injured — a 14-year-old boy who was hit in the head — was in serious condition, AFP reported.
Tel Aviv occupied Gaza during large-scale military offensives in 1967 that also resulted in the capture of more Palestinian territories and expanses of other Arab lands.
Israel reportedly withdrew its troops from the coastal sliver in 2005, but has been keeping the land under recurrent military offensives.
An Israeli-ordered war on Gaza at the turn of 2009 killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and inflicted a damage of above USD 1.6 billion on the sliver’s economy.
Many Palestinians, including women and children, usually search throughout the debris at the sites of the former Israeli settlements in the strip.
The scavengers sell the gleaned materials to contractors and factories in Gaza as a coping strategy against Tel Aviv’s blockade on the enclave.
Tel Aviv has declared a “restricted” zone in the border area, occasionally opening fire on the debris collectors.
The all-out land, aerial and naval restrictions have been depriving 1.5 million Gazans of food, fuel and other necessities since mid-June 2007.
Highlighting the recurrent shootings, an August study by the United Nations said, “Palestinians have been totally or partially prevented from accessing land located up to 1,000-1,500 meters” from the border.
The enclave’s medics say 60 scavengers have been wounded and two killed in the zone since January 2009.
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