Palestinian teen shot by Israeli forces dies: ministry

Palestinian teen shot by Israeli forces dies: ministry
Ahmed al-Ayeda was shot by Israeli forces on the first day of the Great Return March protests.
2 min read
06 August, 2018
Ahmed al-Ayeda died on Sunday [Getty]
An unarmed Palestinian teenager shot by Israeli forces on the Gaza separation barrier four months ago has died, the health ministry said.

Ahmed al-Ayeda, 17, was shot on 30 March - the first day of the Great Return March protests - and had been in hospital since being struck east of Bureij in the central Gaza Strip. 

Ayeda was transferred to a Palestinian hospital in Ramallah on 24 April, but remained in critical condition since. 

At least 160 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the protests began. 

One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper.

The protests are calling for Palestinians to be able to return to the land they or their families fled in the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel.

Most Palestinian refugees were forcibly displaced then, an event the Palestinians mark as the Nakba or the Catastrophe.

Israel says any such return would mean the end of it as a Jewish state. 

Last month, Israel passed a controversial nation-state law that declared the country as the nation state of the Jewish people and stripped Arabic of its official language status. Palestinian lawmakers called the law "racist" and charged that it legalised "apartheid".

The UN and Egypt are currently trying to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas for a lasting truce. Israel has launched three wars on Gaza since 2008.

Israel also imposed a blockade of Gaza that year, and the UN has since warned that the Strip would be "unlivable" by 2020 if the blockade is not lifted. 

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