Dozens of Palestinians wounded by Israeli fire at Gaza border

Gaza's Health Ministry said Friday Israeli gunfire has wounded about 80 Palestinians at a weekly protest along the border with Israel.

It said a female medic was critically wounded from a gunshot to the back and a 10-year-old boy seriously injured.

The Israeli army said troops opened fire to disperse Palestinians who rolled burning tyres at the fence, posing a breach threat, and, in one case, threw a grenade across it.

In Hamas-controlled Gaza, thousands of Palestinian massed near the border fence as part of weekly protests launched on March 30 to demand rights to lands lost in the 1948 war of Israel's foundation.

Since then, at least 170, mainly unarmed, protesters have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and a local rights group. An Israeli soldier was killed by a Gaza sniper during this same period.

Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but has built up settlements in the West Bank, angering Palestinians who see an obstacle to their statehood hopes. The last round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down in 2014.

An Israeli court broke new judicial ground on Tuesday by giving legal recognition to a settlement built without Israeli government authorization on privately owned Palestinian land.

Most countries consider all of the settlements built on territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war to be illegal. Israel disputes this.

Some 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas that are also home to more than 2.6 million Palestinians.