JERUSALEM: Six Palestinian proterters were killed and 140 others were wounded by Israeli forces on Friday during protests along Gaza’s border, Gaza health officials said.

Israel said its troops had shot and killed a group of Gazans who broke through the fence with a bomb and attacked an army post.

With the latest deaths, the number of Gazans killed since the border protests began on March 30 has reached 200, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

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Israeli security personnel have been deployed in large numbers around the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar, sources said. The Bedouin village is said to be slated for demolition and Palestinian villagers have been protesting against the imminent move.

The Israeli military said that the demonstrators, numbering around 14,000, had been “hurling rocks, explosive devices, firebombs and grenades” at Israeli troops and at the fence.

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Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus tweeted that one group had “detonated a bomb on the Israel-Gaza border fence”, allowing around 20 people to climb through the hole.

He said around five members of the group then launched an organised attack against a military post inside Israel and all of them were killed by Israeli troops.

The Palestinian protesters are demanding an end to an Israeli and Egyptian blockade on the narrow coastal strip, which is home to around two million Gazans. They also seek the right to return to lands that Palestinians were forced to leave in 1948.

Israel accuses Hamas, which controls Gaza, of orchestrating the protests along the border fence to provide cover for attacks and to distract from Gazas economic plight.

Hamas denies the allegations.

The Israeli military has been criticised by the Palestinians as well as several international human rights groups for its lethal response to the protests.

Israel says its troops have used “riot dispersal means” and have fired “in accordance with standard operating procedures”.

One Israeli soldier has been killed by a Palestinian sniper during the weekly protests, and tracts of Israeli land have been scorched by incendiary kites and balloons.

Hamas had seized control of Gaza from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007 and has since fought three wars with Israel, most recently in 2014.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said on a visit to Istanbul on Friday that his group was talking to several parties, including Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations, and he hoped that the talks “could lead to calm in return for breaking the siege”.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2018