Israel shoots at Palestinian fishermen 3 miles from Gaza's shores

Israeli gunboats attacked Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Gaza City and forced them to return ashore yesterday morning.

A reporter for the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) said that gunboats opened fire at fishermen and their boats using machineguns. The fishermen were three nautical miles off the shore of the As-Sudaniya area in the northwest of Gaza City.

No one was hurt in the attack.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Palestinian fishermen are permitted to fish up to 20 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, but Israel has kept never allowed them access that far into their waters and constantly limits the fishing area to six nautical miles as part of its blockade on Gaza, often banning access to the waters altogether.

The Israeli occupation’s navy regularly fires on Palestinian fishermen and confiscates their boats and fishing gear, so much so that it has been deemed a “dangerous” profession by rights organisations.

Last year alone, Israeli occupation forces attacked Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the Gaza Strip on at least 320 occasions, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) reported, 63 more than in the previous year. Israel also closed the fishing zone altogether for 16 days last August.

READ: Gaza fishermen are caught between a rock and a hard place