At least three young Palestinian men have been wounded after an Israeli warplane fired a missile towards a crowd of Palestinian youths in the besieged Gaza Strip, a report says. RNA - They were targeted east of Jabaliya in the northern parts of the blockaded enclave on Thursday afternoon, the Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported, citing local sources.
They were allegedly launching incendiary kites and balloons when the Israeli missile landed near them, it said.
The wounded, the report said, were taken to the Indonesian Hospital, also in northern Gaza, to receive due medical treatment for their “minor injuries.”
An Israeli spokesperson confirmed the airstrike in a statement.
Flying kites and balloons has become a new mode of resistance since Palestinians began their weekly protests near a fence separating the Gaza Strip from the occupied territories on March 30 last year.
Israeli officials try to put a criminal spin on the protests, claiming that kites and balloons launched by Palestinians have burned thousands of acres of farmland, forests and nature reserves in the regions around the Gaza Strip.
On Thursday, Israeli authorities continued to seal off the Kerem Shalom crossing.
The land crossing between the southern Gaza Strip and the occupied territories is the main export-import terminal for inhabitants of the enclave.
Israeli officials also banned Gaza fishermen from working off the coast of the besieged territory for the fourth day in a row, said head of Palestinian Fishermen Union Zakariya Bakr said.
Israel imposed a limit of three nautical miles on fishing in the waters off the Gaza shore until August 2014, when Palestinian fishermen were allowed to go out six miles under a ceasefire agreement reached after a deadly 50-day Israeli war in the same month.
The fishing zone is supposed to extend to 20 nautical miles under the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords were signed between the Israeli regime and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) during the early-mid 1990s.
In May 2017, Israeli authorities increased the fishing area for Gaza fishermen to nine nautical miles.
Over the past few years, however, Israeli forces have carried out more than a hundred attacks on Palestinian boats, arresting dozens of fishermen and confiscating several boats. Furthermore, they time and again prevent Gazan fishermen from doing their job.
Tensions have been running high in Gaza since March 30 last year, when the "Great March of Return" protests started, demanding the right to return for those driven out of their homeland by Israeli aggression.
The clashes in Gaza reached their peak on May 14, the eve of the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day or the Day of Catastrophe, which coincided this year with Washington’s relocation of its embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.
More than 260 Palestinians have so far been killed and at least 26,000 others wounded in the Gaza clashes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Gaza has been under the Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards. Israel has launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.
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