GAZA, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian teenager on Saturday succumbed to wounds he sustained on Aug. 3 after being shot by Israeli soldiers during the anti-Israel protests of the "Great March of Return" in the eastern Gaza Strip, medics said.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra said in a press statement that Suhaib Abu Kashef, 16, died of his wounds in the hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel on Saturday night.
Al-Qedra said that since the "Great March of Return" and defiance against the Israeli siege in the eastern Gaza Strip started on March 30, the Israeli army had killed 178 Palestinians and wounded more than 19,000.
Earlier on Saturday, Israeli soldiers stationed on the border between Israel and east of Rafah town in the southern Gaza Strip shot and wounded an Islamic Jihad militant who approached the fence of the borders, medical sources said.
Later on Saturday evening, Ayman Sahabani, head of the emergency department at Shifa Hospital in Gaza city, said that two Palestinian demonstrators were shot and injured by Israeli soldiers' gunfire in eastern Gaza city close to the border with Israel.
Over the past few days, Gaza activists formed groups calling themselves the battle units, cut the barbed wire of the fence of the border between the eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, infiltrated into Israel, burnt tires and got back to Gaza.
Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a pro-Hamas political analyst, told reporters that the Gaza battle units aim to drain, exhaust and disturb the Israeli occupation forces during the night.
"This kind of protest is to (put) pressure on the occupation to keep the Gaza Strip question on its agenda and remind the occupation that as long as the siege goes on, marches and protests will go on too," he said.
Efforts mediated by both Egypt and United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov have so far failed to broker a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Gaza Hamas-led militants and thus end the months-long violence.
The "Great March of Return" protests, which peak every Friday, demand the return of Palestinian refugees, who were forced to leave their cities during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, as well as lifting the blockade Israel has been imposing on Gaza since 2007.
