Israeli forces have inflicted injuries on 10 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip over the past three months, a children’s right group has reported.
The minors were targeted while collecting debris from former Israeli settlements which are now Tel Aviv-imposed “buffer zones,” Defense for Children International (DCI) was cited as saying in a Monday report by British newspaper The Guardian.
The body said nine of the victims, aged between 13 and 17, were shot in a leg or arm, while one was shot in the stomach.
The paper cited Bassam Masri, a senior Palestinian medic as saying that about 50 people had been taken in for Israeli-inflicted gunshot wounds in the past three months, about five of whom had died.
Israeli forces carried out a self-proclaimed withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. The military, however, continues to carry out regular attacks on the enclave.
Adie Mormech from the Palestinian-led organization International Solidarity Movement told a Press TV correspondent in Gaza that the rubble collectors “are actually the biggest victims of shootings in the buffer zones. The reasons why no one can go there is because Israel shoots on sight and they are trigger happy.”
“After finishing school, my son joins me in this area. Israeli soldiers have shot and wounded many gravel collectors including my two cousins. They have even killed our mule,” one local said.
Israel has also been keeping the strip under an all-out land, naval and aerial blockade for more than three years, depriving its 1.5 million residents of food, fuel and other necessities.
“According to the UN aid agency UNRWA, about 80 percent of the Gaza population depends on assistance from UN agencies as unemployment has soared [to] above 40 percent,” our correspondent said. The debris would be sold to contractors and factories in the strip, he added, as a coping strategy, adopted by the locals in the face of the prevalent dire situation.
“We have no other source of income except this dangerous job. We can not import construction materials and that is why we use scrap metal to rebuild the homes that were destroyed during the war,” said another Gaza resident.
Source: Press TV