By Qais Abu Samra

RAMALLAH (AA): Israeli forces killed 312 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip last year, according to a Palestinian NGO on Wednesday.

A total of 53 children and three women were among those killed by the Israeli army in 2018, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s Abdullah Hourani Center for Studies and Documentation said in a statement.

According to the NGO, 262 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip and 50 others in Israel-occupied West Bank.

“The number of Palestinian martyrs has increased by 200 percent in 2018, compared to a year earlier,” the Center said, adding that 31,000 Palestinians were injured in the Gaza Strip and 500 others in the West Bank by Israeli army fire.

Since March 2018, Palestinians have been staging rallies across the buffer zone between Gaza and Israel to demand the right to return to their homes and villages in historical Palestine, from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.

They also demand an end to Israel’s 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.

[Archive photo: 8 month old baby dies of  Israeli tear gas inhalation in Gaza border with Israel. Photo shows baby’s father carrying Leila Anwar Ghandoour on 15 May 2018. Photographer: Mustafa Hassona/AA]