GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – A 12-year-old Palestinian boy shot last weekend by Zionist troops during a demonstration near the Gaza fence has died from his wounds, the besieged enclave’s health ministry said on Saturday.
Omar Hasan Abu al-Nil, from the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City, was shot with a live bullet during a rally marking the 52nd anniversary of an arson attack on Al-Aqsa mosque in Al-Quds.
The teenager was taken to a nearby hospital, where he underwent a surgery.
He remained in a critical condition at the intensive care unit until he succumbed to his serious wounds early on Saturday.
Around 40 people were wounded by Zionist troops on 21 August, including 32-year-old Osama Khaled Ideij, who died on Wednesday.
Among the two Palestinians critically injured was a 13-year-old boy who was shot in the head, Gaza’s health ministry said.
The Zionist regime military said hundreds of demonstrators approached one area of the fence in northern Gaza and attempted to climb over it. It said troops fired tear gas and live rounds at the protesters.
The injuries came during a Gaza protest in support of Al-Quds, where Zionist troops frequently raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound – the third-holiest site for Muslims – during the holy month of Ramadan, wounding hundreds of Palestinians.
The raids prompted Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip to respond to acts of aggression and fire retaliatory rockets into Israeli-occupied territories.
The Israeli army then launched a devastating 11-day war on the besieged Palestinian coastal enclave that killed at least 260 Palestinians, including 66 children.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Zionist troops killed nine Palestinian children and injured 556 others between May 7 and July 31 in the occupied Al-Quds.
They also arrested at least 170 Palestinian children during the period, the UN agency said in a new report released on Thursday.
It added it will not be able to resume its operations to support the Palestinian children due to a severe budget deficit.
The UNICEF noted that the occupying regime’s troops targeted 116 private kindergartens and damaged 140 public school buildings during last May’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip.