Israeli soldiers shoot worker on north Gaza border

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- A Palestinian man was injured Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire at a group of workers collecting stone aggregates near an evacuated Israeli settlement in northern Gaza.

Eyewitnesses said 19-year-old Karam Al-Adham was shot in his left leg near the abandoned Eli Sinai structure northwest of Beit Lahiya. He was evacuated to hospital, where medics said he sustained moderate injuries.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that a force fired on two Palestinians who "approached the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip. The force fired warning shots, and when the two did not leave the scene, he fired at the lower body and identified a hit."

Workers are targeted nearly every day, and 25 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the border area since the end of Israel's three-week offensive on Gaza that ended in January 2009.

As Israel bans concrete and crushed stone for construction, young men often go to evacuated settlements to collect gravel from buildings that Israeli forces demolished before the unilateral withdrawal in 2005.

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buffer zone

violence

gaza