GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Two Palestinian minors were killed and over 200 wounded by Israeli forces during the 16th "Great March of Return" in the besieged Gaza Strip, in support of residents of Khan al-Ahmar, on Friday.The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza confirmed that two Palestinian minors were killed during Friday protests; one was killed after being injured by Israeli live bullets in eastern Gaza City and was identified as 15-year-old Othman Rami Halas, while the other was identified as Muhammad Nasser Sharab, 18, and had succumbed early Saturday to wounds he sustained on Friday in eastern Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Ministry confirmed that among the wounded was a girl, an elderly woman and a journalist, who were injured in eastern al-Breij refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip.
Locals said that Palestinian youths attempted to cut through parts of Israel’s security fence along the eastern borders of Gaza, in response, Israeli forces fired dozens of tear-gas bombs at them.
Sources added that thousands of Palestinians arrived to return camps to demand their right of return.
The "Great March of Return" weeks-long protests were launched by thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza -- which has suffered from a decade-long Israeli siege -- who took to the borders to demand their right of return as refugees to their original homelands, now in present-day Israel.
Almost 1.3 million of Gaza's 2 million inhabitants who are refugees are demanding their right to return to their original homelands from which they were forcibly expelled when the state of Israel was created in 1948.
Rights groups have harshly condemned Israel’s use of live fire on the civilian protesters, calling the practice criminal and illegal.
