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285 Palestinians Injured by Israeli Fire in Gaza, West Bank
The number of the injured Palestinians in clashes with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Saturday has reached 285, according to the Red Crescent Society.
Eighty Palestinian protestors were wounded in the Gaza Strip where the violence has spreaded to nearly all the Jewish settlements and even to Erez and Rafah border checkpoints which connect Israel and Egypt respectively.
Thousands of angry Palestinians are gathering at the the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the center of the Gaza Strip, which witnessed the most violent clashes. They hurled stones at Israeli soldiers, who responded with rubber coated as well as live bullets.
In the West Bank cities of Hebron and Ramallah, protests and clashes are continuing.
The Palestinian leadership has declared Saturday the "day of mourning" for the five Palestinians killed Friday during clashes with Israeli security forces at the holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, and called for a general strike.
Clashes broke out at the holy site on Thursday following a visit by Ariel Sharon, the hawkish leader of Israel's right-wing Likud party, to the religious shrine in Jerusalem's walled Old City.
A Palestinian policeman also shot dead an Israeli soldier in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya on Friday.
The Palestinian leadership condemned the escalating violence at a cabinet meeting on Friday and vowed not to give up the sovereignty over Jerusalem.
Israel barred its citizens on Friday from entering Palestinian-ruled areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the trouble flared. It closed the border crossing between Jerusalem and the West Bank on Saturday.
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