Israelis kill 4 more Palestinians, injure 1 in al-Quds, WB
Four Palestinians have been shot dead and another injured by Israeli regime forces in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the occupied West Bank amid growing concerns over a major Palestinian uprising.
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The latest shooting of the Palestinian youths on Saturday came as the Israeli media cited official accounts as alleging that the victims attempted to stab the regime’s soldiers and armed Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.
Since the current violence erupted on October 1, Israeli troops and armed settlers have killed 41 Palestinians while seven Israelis have also been killed in retaliatory knife attacks.
According to press reports, three of the Saturday's killings occurred in the flashpoint West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron), where over 500 Israeli settlers live in a heavily guarded occupied enclave in the city center surrounded by nearly 200,000 local Palestinian citizens.
The fourth victim was shot dead at a checkpoint in an Israeli settlement complex in the Israeli-annexed east al-Quds. The fifth Palestinian was also shot at another checkpoint, reports added.
According to both Palestinians and Israeli sources, all the victims shot by the Israeli on Saturday were Palestinian teenagers.
Israeli soldiers further used rubber bullets and live fire against stone-throwing protesters in several parts of al-Khalil, wounding 11 with rubber bullets and another one with a gunshot, local reports said, citing Palestinian medics.
This is while the Israeli troops opened fire against Palestinian in the border region of the besieged Gaza Strip, wounding four more civilians, the enclave's Health Minister Ashraf al-Qudra stated on Saturday.
The persistent use of deadly force against Palestinian protesters has fueled fears of a fresh Palestinian intifada (uprising) similar to those of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, when thousands of Palestinians were killed by the Israeli regime forces in near-daily violence.
Meanwhile, the Tel Aviv regime have deployed a huge number of its military forces in the occupied East al-Quds in failing efforts to halt the growing unrest and retaliatory knife attacks on Israeli troops and armed settlers.
The latest developments came as hundreds of Palestinians took part in Saturday’s funeral of Ayad Awawdeh in the West Bank village of Dura, where his mother was quoted as saying in an AFP report that her son had "watched the news on television the whole time and exploded with anger at seeing so many horrors."
According to the report, the Israeli regime has threatened that it may no longer hand over the bodies of Palestinians allegedly responsible for attacks on their families.
The ongoing violence followed near-daily clashes last month between the Israeli regime soldiers and Palestinian youths at the holy al-Aqsa mosque compound in East al-Quds.
