Updated 3: Five Palestinians were killed and twenty-six injured, on Wednesday, as a result of an unidentified explosive device where dozens of Palestinians gathered along the border fence, east of Gaza City.
According to the Ministry of Health, five Palestinians were killed, and twenty-six others, including children, were injured, on Wednesday evening, after an explosion along the border fence east of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip.
All injuries were transported to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, for medical intervention.
The Palestinians killed in the incident were identified as Mohammad Omar Qaddoum, Ra’ed Rawhi Yahia Ramadan, 17, Abdul-Nasser Rami Nofal, 18, Ali Jom’a Ayyad, and Baraa Wael Al-Zard, 18, who is reported to be the son of a Hamas leader.
Sources described a “suspicious object” as the cause of the explosion, while another source quoted eyewitnesses who stated, that a members of an Israeli engineering unit arrived at the site, adding that occupation soldiers opened fire at those in the vicinity, and prevented them from leaving the place, until the device exploded.
The exact cause of the explosion was not confirmed at the time of writing this report; however, it as described as an “accidental explosion”.
An eyewitness account offers some further details about the nature of the device.
What happened with us near the fence, there was a suspicious object, a camera-like object, its width was about 10 centimeters (3.9 inches), with a half meter length (19.7 inches). The object was completely black. We were ambushed, one of the youths decided to check it with a stick, but it immediately exploded.
Earlier Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of Palestinians gathered along the border fence between Gaza and Israel, to commemorate the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces from the Gaza Strip on September 12, 2005.
Soldiers fired live rounds and tear gas canisters at demonstrators, injuring five with live rounds, they were transported to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
One man was shot in the head with a tear gas canister, while a number of others sustained inhalation injuries from exposure to tear gas.
Sources added that Palestinian youths detonated small crude explosive devices near the border fence. No injuries were reported.
