A Palestinian teenager who was shot last week by Israeli forces during anti-occupation protests and clashes along the border between the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied territories has succumbed to his gunshot wounds.
The spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health, Ashraf al-Qidra, said in a statement that 19-year-old Anas Abu Asser died from his serious wounds in al-Shifa Hospital of Gaza City on Thursday afternoon.
Qidra added that Asser, a local resident of Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in the southern part of Gaza City, was shot by Israeli snipers on April 27.
Protests along the Gaza border since March 30 have led to clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces, during which at least 49 Palestinians have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries.
The Palestinian rally, known as the “Great March of Return,” will last until May 15, which coincides with the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day (Day of Catastrophe) on which Israel was created.
Every year on May 15, Palestinians all over the world hold demonstrations to commemorate Nakba Day, which marks the anniversary of the forcible eviction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland by Israelis in 1948.
More than 760,000 Palestinians -- now estimated to number nearly five million with their descendants -- were driven out of their homes in May 1948.
Since 1948, the Israeli regime has denied Palestinian refugees the right to return, despite UN resolutions and international law that uphold people’s right to return to their homelands.
Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem al-Quds and parts of Syria’s Golan Heights during the Six-Day War in 1967. It later annexed East Jerusalem al-Quds in a move not recognized by the international community.
Israel is required to withdraw from all the territories it seized in the war under UN Security Council Resolution 242 that was adopted in November 1967, months after the Six-Day War, but the Tel Aviv regime has defied that piece of international law ever since.