Israeli soldiers fired live rounds and teargas into thousands of Palestinians rallying for a second week for the right to return to occupied lands

Further protests of many thousands of Palestinians today in Gaza, hundreds of metres from the border with Israel, have been fired upon with live ammunition and tear gas by Israeli soldiers – with at least 9 killed and hundreds wounded, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

See our gallery of images below.

Protesters piled up and set fire to hundreds of tyres to create a smoke screen to obstruct the view of Israeli snipers firing on unarmed protesters.

There will be protests tomorrow (Saturday) in London, Manchester, Bristol, Leeds and other locations in the UK against the Israeli forces’ killings and the continued devastating blockade of the Gaza strip.

It follows the massacre of 15 unarmed protesters by Israeli forces last Friday on the ‘Great Return March’, where over 1,400 were also injured; in a turbulent beginning to the planned 6 weeks of protest demanding the ‘right of return’ to occupied territories in the lead-up to the 70th anniversary of the Nakba ‘catastrophe’ – the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their land – and the deliberate move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem at this date.

All this in spite of UN Secretary General António Guterres declaring, “I particularly urge Israel to exercise extreme caution with the use of force in order to avoid casualties,” in a statement. “Civilians must be able to exercise their right to demonstrate peacefully.”

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, has said he is pushing for Guterres to pursue an “independent, transparent” investigation into those “responsible for killing and injuring Palestinian protesters.”

It has been reported that the UN Security Council statement that called for an independent inquiry into Israel’s attack on protesters in Gaza last Friday was blocked by the United States on Saturday.