Palestinian journalist killed in Israel-Gaza protests

GAZA: A Palestinian journalist died on Saturday after being wounded by Israeli fire on Friday while covering deadly protests along the Israel-Gaza border, health officials said.

Yaser Murtaja, 30, a cameraman for Palestinian Ain Media, was the 29th Palestinian killed in the week-long protests.

Photos showed Murtaja lying wounded on a stretcher wearing a navy-blue protective vest marked ‘PRESS’ in large black capital letters.

Health officials said a live bullet had penetrated the side of his abdomen and he succumbed to his wounds in hospital.

A statement from the Israeli military said: "The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) does not intentionally target journalists.

The circumstances in which journalists were allegedly hit by IDF fire are not familiar to the IDF and are being looked into".

The daily protests, dubbed "The Great March of Return", began on March 30 along the Israel-Gaza frontier, reviving a longstanding demand for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to towns and villages from which their families fled, or were driven out, when the state of Israel was created.

Israel has stationed sharpshooters to stop attempts by Palestinians to breach the border or sabotage the security fence.

Freelance photographer Ashraf Abu Amra told Reuters he was next to Murtaja, whom he said was wearing a helmet and protective vest.

Abu Amra said they were both clearly marked as journalists. "We were filming as youths torched tyres.

We were about 250 meters from the fence," said Abu Amra.

"Israeli forces opened fire and injuries began.

Yaser and I ran to film when suddenly Yaser fell to the ground". I screamed to him ‘Yaser are you alright?’.

He didn’t respond and there was blood on the ground underneath him. "I knew it was a bad injury and people carried him away," said Abu Amra.

Video footage showed Murtaja being carried to an ambulance with crowds around and black smoke rising from where protesters had set tyres alight, east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Secretary-General Christophe Deloire condemned what the group described as Israel’s disproportionate response and called for an independent investigation into the incident. Murtaja was married with a two-year-old son.