The standoff with Israeli forces at the heavily fortified border fence in eastern Gaza has left more than a dozen injured as hundreds of women and girls joined the ‘Palestinian Women for the Return and Breaking the Siege’ rally.
Hundreds of women arrived at the Israeli-Gaza border on Tuesday to join the female version of the Great March of Return, denouncing Israeli occupation of the enclave. Many women took their children with them.
Some seventeen people were wounded by Israeli gunfire, according to AFP citing Gaza's health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qodra.
Footage from the Ruptly news agency shows female demonstrators suffocating from tear gas and washing their eyes. Some are assisted by medics on the ground, while one woman and a man were stretchered away.
More than 130 Palestinians have been killed, including children, and thousands injured during the three-month-long protest at the border. Nearly half of the deaths occurred amid intense violence on May 14, when the US moved its embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to the disputed city of Jerusalem. Some relatives of the victims came to Tuesday's rally.
“I came to finish the march that my daughter had started,” Rim Abu Irmana said as cited by AFP. The woman was holding a picture of her 15-year-old daughter, who was killed by Israeli gunfire during the deadly May protest.
The weekly march has been running since spring with Palestinian protesters denouncing Israeli occupation and the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and demanding the right to return to the areas they were expelled from in 1948.
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