NOVANEWS
by crescentandcross
Gaza City – Israeli soldiers fired toward thousands of Palestinians who marched Sunday to the border with Israel north of Gaza City, injuring at least 30 people.
Gaza emergency services chief Adham Abu Salmeya said the Israelis fired first a smoke shell, then three artillery shells and opened also small gunfire.
The Israeli military would not immediately comment.
The marchers were reported to have burst through road blocks on the way to the Erez crossing with Israel.
One of the injured was in critical and seven in serious condition, Abu Salmeya said.
He said minors were among the injured, as large crowds gathered in the area to participate in marches marking the 63rd anniversary since hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became refugees in 1948.
The critically injured was identified as Mohamed Othman, a photographer for a Gaza-based electronic news agency called ‘Safa.’
In Tel Aviv, an Arab-Israeli truck driver killed a man and injured some 17 Israelis as he ploughed into cars and a bus along a road in the south of the city.
Israeli police said they suspected an intentional attack, coinciding with Nakba Day.
The driver said it was an accident, losing control of the vehicle after a tyre burst.
Police said this claim did not match eyewitness accounts.
Spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said the driver, in his early 20s, was from the Arab-Israeli village of Kfar Qassem, north-east of Tel Aviv near the border with the West Bank.
Witnesses said he shouted ‘God is Great’ in Arabic and tried to beat someone with a part of a traffic light, after he got off the truck. Some 40 angry Israeli bystanders for their part beat the driver, before police managed to drag him off into custody.
Witnesses said the driver stopped at nothing and caused damage along a stretch of some 2 kilometres, arguing it made no sense he would have been unable to regain control for that long.
Palestinian youths also clashed with Israeli police and soldiers in East Jerusalem, and at the Israeli-controlled military checkpoints of Qalandia and Atara, south and north-west of the central West Bank city of Ramallah.
Some 30 Palestinians were reported injured at Qalandia, two by rubber bullets and the rest from tear gas inhalation.
Three youths were arrested and one Israeli policeman was also lightly injured by a stone thrown in a clash with some 40 youths in one East Jerusalem area, police said.
Israel had deployed some 10,000 policemen in and around Jerusalem and at possible flashpoints near the border with the West Bank.
The Israeli army also imposed a closure on the occupied territory, closing roadblocks on key West Bank roads, amid fears of violence.
A page on the social network Facebook urged Palestinians to launch a third Intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupation on Sunday.
