Mumbai, India - On a breezy morning of March 22, Bombay High Court lawyer Afroz Shah was strolling on Mumbai's Versova beach when he witnessed an incredible sight: nearly 100 olive ridley sea turtle hatchlings waddling towards the sea.
An overwhelmed Shah immediately called for help to ensure that the turtles were not attacked by stray dogs on the beach. Soon, a large crowd of people began to record on their mobile phones the slow march of the hatchlings towards the sea, which went on for half an hour.
Shah perhaps was the only person in that crowd who knew the significance of the moment.
"I was in tears as soon as I saw those turtles. It's almost as if I had fathered them," said the 37-year-old lawyer, who has spent the last three years cleaning up the Versova beach.
... We think we fulfil the duty only by bashing the government. But the government is not littering, we are.
AFROZ SHAH, LAWYER AND ACTIVIST
Shah's herculean efforts - removing more than 13 million kg of toxic waste by working non-stop every weekend since 2015 - had borne fruit with the hatching of the turtles, a phenomenon that last happened on Versova two decades ago.
The Versova beach is one of the dirtiest on Mumbai's 140km long coastline.
Last year, the Maharashtra state's Pollution Control Board (MPCB) conducted a Water Quality Index (WQI) of Mumbai's coast and found that the highly-polluted seafronts fell within the indices of 38 and 50 on a scale of 0-100, which means the water quality was poor.
Indices between 80 and 88 are considered good quality. The city's longest river, Mithi, had a WQI of 28, making it highly polluted.
Week 127 .
Fantastic news for Mumbai .
We got back Olive Ridley Sea Turtle after 20 years. Historic moment
Nested and Hatched at our beach. We facilitate their journey to ocean.
Another study last year by Alfred Wegener Institute's Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany found an average of 68.83 items every sq metre at four of Mumbai's beaches, including Versova. Most of the pollutants were microplastics.
However, thanks to Shah's clean-up of the Versova beach, the WQI there rose from 37 in February 2017 to 47 by the end of the year.
And that perhaps explains why the olive ridley turtles finally showed up at Versova after two decades. The olive ridley sea turtles are listed as "vulnerable" in the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. They are also protected under India's Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.
In India, the mass nesting site of olive ridley turtles is on the eastern coast: earlier this year, 428,000 turtles nested at the Rushikulya rookery coast in eastern Odisha state's Ganjam district.
So, how did he think of cleaning the beach?
After he returned to Versova in 2015, Shah says he shared his shock at seeing a filthy beach with the 84-year-old secretary of his apartment complex. There was only one thing to do now.
"I put in my own money to clear the garbage," Shah says. He has spent nearly a fourth of all his income so far on what has become his mission for now.
Shah says the hyper-consumerist lifestyle has led to plastic becoming the largest element in rubbish[Priyanka Borpujari/Al Jazeera]
Since big trucks risk getting stuck on the beach, excavators and tractors carried the rubbish to the trucks parked nearby, from where it was taken to recycling units in another Mumbai suburb.
Shah explained that each tractor loads 4,000kg of waste, so on any given weekend, a tractor is loaded about 20 times. Currently, there are three tractors on the beach, used for cleanups, while an excavator is taken on rent for 7,000 rupees (a little more than $100).
Even though Mumbai's cash-rich municipality - Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) - with a budget of over $4bn had enough machines as well as workers, Shah says they were not interested in the project.
Despite repeated attempts, officials at BMC declined to comment on the story.
YB Sontakke, a senior official with MPCB, told Al Jazeera that his office tests water quality and develops an action plan, which is forwarded to another department to implement. He, however, refused to say anything on Shah's clean-up drive impacting the quality of water on the Versova beach.
For three years, 40 to 50 volunteers would gather at Shah's residence every weekend. When Al Jazeera visited him on one such Sunday in the first week of April, it found volunteers in orange T-shirts marked VRV - Versova Resident Volunteers - giving him a helping hand.
The volunteers had insisted on the tees. "The T-shirts feel clannish [sic]. I don't like to announce what we are doing. Would you announce to the world when you go to pray in a mosque?" he says with a hint of embarrassment.
Shah says they also made him take the project to Twitter, which he did nearly a year after he started the mammoth cleaning drive. Today, he has nearly 24,000 followers.
"They were mostly photos of beach clean-up or related events like speaking at schools or a visit to the site by a dignitary."
The first dignitary to take a note of Shah's campaign was Lewis Pugh, UN Environment Patron of Oceans, who arrived on Versova a year after the drive began. The UN Environment Programme called his campaign the "world's largest beach clean-up in history" and gave Shah the UN's Champions of the Earth award.
He had to briefly suspend the Versova clean-up after his team was heckled by local goons over several weeks. The rubbish was also not being cleared by the municipal body's trucks.
This prompted Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to appeal to Shah to resume the clean-up, and instructed the local civic administration to clear the same.
"The CM came much later, after about 110 weeks of clean-up," Shah says, adding that politicians view environmental protection as a mere event.
Hyper-consumerism and its love for plastic
Shah blames the hyper-consumerist lifestyle that has led to plastic becoming the largest element in rubbish. Growing up in Versova, he remembers no rubbish on the beach. He moved to another suburb for a few years, and returned to Versova in 2015, the year he began his drive.
He says the perfect view of the sea from his 10th-floor apartment was marred by the presence of plastic in heaps. "The garbage was five feet high. A child could easily drown in it."
The 37-year-old, however, is both excited and cautious about the recent ban on plasticsimposed by the Maharashtra government, even though he wishes several items were not exempt from scrutiny.
After the 2005 deluge in Mumbai - which killed 1,493 people - plastic bags below 50 microns were banned, but with little effect as they continued to clog the city drains.
Darryl D'Monte, former editor of The Times of India newspaper's Mumbai edition and chairman of the Forum of Environmental Journalists in India, says he once participated in clearing debris off the mangroves at Carter Road, another seafront.
"Apart from plastics, we found clothes and rubber sandals in the garbage. People are not only accustomed to using plastics, they also mindlessly discard them," he says.
D'Monte remembers swimming on Carter Road as a child, and understands what the beaches mean to the citizens of Mumbai. "The city is so congested that people throng to the beaches any time of the year," he says.
Recently, Chief Minister Fadnavis declared the state free of open defecation, but the truth is nowhere close. While cleaning the toilets in the slums close to the beach, Shah says he was surprised to find just 52 toilet seats for over 25,000 people.
"Some toilets were donated by the corporates, but who will maintain them? One cannot blame slum dwellers for defecating on the beach," Shah says.
Shah says his bigger ruse is that India's democratic process is far from participatory. "Along with our rights, we have duties, and one of them is to protect the environment. But we think we fulfil the duty only by bashing the government. But the government is not littering, we are."
D'Monte hopes that the appearance of the turtles would spur a larger cleanliness movement.
For that, Shah has his hopes pinned on the next generation.
"At a school I visited, the kids were wearing caps that said: 'I am Afroz'. They said they want to step into my shoes when they grow up," he says. "I felt my job was done."
The Versova beach is one of the dirtiest on Mumbai's 140km long coastline [File: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters]
Priyanka Borpujari is an independent journalist based in Mumbai, India. She writes on human rights and development. She was the 2012-2013 IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow and was based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
Last Saturday, when the United States, the UK and France launched strikes on three chemical facilities in Syria, the move was met with disapproval in some quarters. The pre-announced spectacle blew up three buildings and took no lives, but some pronounced it a "dangerous escalation". Some spoke of its "illegality". All complained about its disregard for the OPCW investigation.
The action, which lasted less than an hour, was an escalation only if everything that preceded it was normal. By this reckoning, Syria has now returned to its status quo of genocide by the Assad regime.
The action was illegal only if by legality we mean approval by the UN Security Council. But the Security Council is not a neutral adjudicating authority like a court. Its decisions are constrained by the interests of its permanent members. To say an action is "legal", in this case, would be to say: "Vladimir Putin approved".
What then of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation?
This depends on what answer is being sought. Because the OPCW's remit does not include apportioning blame. Untrammelled access for the OPCW would have merely proved what was already known: that a chemical attack took place. It would not have resolved the manufactured controversy over who was responsible (manufactured, because there is only one party in Syria with the means, intention and history of deploying chemical weapons by air).
But had the OPCW confirmed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's responsibility, what consequences should have followed?
Last year, after the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack, the UN did respond to the calls for an investigation by creating the UN-OPCW Joint Investigation Mechanism (JIM) with the authority to identify perpetrators. But once the JIM concluded that al-Assad was responsible for the attack, Russia revoked its authority. And the fact that the UN confirmed the regime's responsibility for the attack didn't provoke any calls for accountability from the crowd currently insisting on the sanctity of the legal process.
All calls for "more investigation" sputter into platitudes about a "negotiated settlement" or "UN authorised action" (which, is another way of saying "never", since Putin is unlikely to grant western powers the authority to act against his interests).
Fetishising a dubious legal process thus becomes a temporising measure that grants the perpetrators of mass crime impunity against the palpable illegality of using chemical weapons. That the case is not made in good faith is obvious from the analogy that often accompanies it.
Should we be trusting the same governments and agencies that lied to us about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)?
Is Syria like Iraq?
Considering the ubiquity of the Iraq analogy, it would seem that the old cliche that generals are always fighting the last war also applies to their critics. Syria is Iraq only if facile juxtapositions replace substantive comparisons. Beyond the fact that both countries have been led by Baathist regimes that brought immense misery upon their people, there is no concrete detail in which Syria and Iraq are similar.
In 2003, Iraq was invaded even though there was no imminent humanitarian catastrophe demanding action; in Syria, the regime has been on a rampage since 2011, yet only on two occasions has it been subjected to limited and rather ineffective military strikes on "humanitarian grounds".
Where in Iraq, the US and Britain had used false pretexts for action, in Syria real and frequent violations have only twice shaken the west out of inaction. Where in Iraq, the alleged possession of WMDs was deemed sufficient grounds for an invasion, their confirmed use in Syria has only belatedly occasioned a response, largely symbolic, lacking shock or awe.
The analogy also seems ignorant of the knowns and unknowns in the case against Iraq. In 2003, despite intense US pressure, international bodies like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and OPCW declined to endorse the administration's case against Iraq. In Syria, the regime hasn't denied its possession of chemical weapons and the UN has confirmed their use on at least 34 occasions.
The 'deep state' argument
But what of the claim that a "deep state" is trying to mislead us into war, as it did in Iraq?
In 2002, the CIA resisted administration pressure to provide a defensible rationale for invading Iraq. Then Vice President Dick Cheney had to personally visit the CIA's headquarters in Langley several times to pressure analysts to produce an assessment favourable to the administration's case. But, in spite of the bullying, the "deep state" (including the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Energy and the State Department) delivered their combined judgment in a caveat-laden National Intelligence Estimate that would only confirm that if left unchecked, Iraq may develop nuclear weapons in a decade.
The Bush administration recognised the inadequacy of the assessment and, in the end, had to rely on two ad hoc operations based in the Pentagon to produce its own politicised intelligence, outside the recalcitrant channels of the "deep state". French, German and British intelligence also failed to oblige Bush (leading the UK's then-PM Tony Blair to produce his own politicised "dodgy" dossier).
In Syria, by contrast, US, British, and French intelligence agencies have been unanimous in delivering confident judgments on the regime's responsibility for the chemical attack. These judgments have been corroborated by Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), journalistic investigations, witness testimonies, human rights organisations, and, of course, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria (which confirmed at least 34 instances of the regime's use of chemical weapons even before Douma).
The case for Iraq never came close to achieving this kind of consensus.
The Halabja massacre
There is, however, an Iraq analogy that is relevant to Syria: It is not 2003, but 1988, when, during Saddam Hussein's military campaign in the north, nearly 5,000 civilians were killed in a chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja.
The attack followed the town's capture by the Iranian army, and Iraq immediately blamed it on Iran as a "false flag" operation. US intelligence, which at the time was allied to the Iraqi regime, amplified the claim. But in an ironic twist, once Hussein fell out of western favour after annexing Kuwait, "anti-imperialists" (including, sadly, the late Edward Said) felt obliged to use the "false flag" theory to absolve Hussein in their misguided attempt to forestall an intervention.
Therein lies the lesson: Facile contrarianism is an intellectual dead end that contributes to moral atrophy and reactionary politics. We live in a time of great danger and, due to its scope and consequences, Syria may become the defining conflict of this century.
We can differ on our views about the best course for achieving peace, but we must not allow our conclusions to determine which facts we acknowledge and which we don't. Let us certainly not distort or bend the truth to satisfy our preconceptions. In these times of universal deceit, it must become a moral duty for all citizens to confront misuses of language and history.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres in an address to the Security Council
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 13 2018 (IPS) - The situation in the Middle East is in chaos — to such an extent it has become a threat to international peace and security.
The region is facing a true Gordian knot – different fault lines crossing each other and creating a highly volatile situation with risks of escalation, fragmentation and division as far as the eye can see with profound regional and global ramifications.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Credit: UN Photo
We see a multiplicity of divides. The first is the memory of the Cold War. But to be precise, it is more than a simple memory.
The Cold War is back — with a vengeance but with a difference. The mechanisms and the safeguards to manage the risks of escalation that existed in the past no longer seem to be present.
Second, the Palestinian-Israeli divide. Third, the Sunni-Shia divide, evident from the Gulf to the Mediterranean. It is important to note that apparent religious divides are normally the result of political or geo-strategic manipulations.
Finally, a wide range of different factors — from opposing attitudes in relation to the role of the Muslim Brotherhood or the status of the Kurds, to the dramatic threats to communities that have been living in the region for millennia and are part of the rich diversity of Middle Eastern societies.
This multiplicity of divides is reflected in a multiplicity of conflicts with different degrees of interconnection, several of them clearly linked to the threat of global terrorism. Many forms of escalation are possible.
We see the wounds of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict deepening once again. The recent violence in Gaza has resulted in many needless deaths and injuries.
I repeat my call for an independent and transparent investigation into these incidents. I also appeal to those concerned to refrain from any act that could lead to further casualties and, in particular, any measures that could place civilians in harm’s way.
This tragedy underlines the urgency of revitalizing the peace process for a two-state solution that will allow Palestinians and Israelis to live in two democratic states side by side in peace and within secure and recognised borders. I reaffirm the United Nations’ readiness to support these efforts.
In Yemen, we are witnessing the worst humanitarian disaster in today’s world. There is only one pathway to ending the Yemeni conflict and addressing the humanitarian crisis – a negotiated political settlement through inclusive intra-Yemeni dialogue.
My Special Envoy Martin Griffiths is doing everything possible to facilitate that political settlement — and he will brief the Council next week.
Iraq demonstrates that progress is possible with concerted local, regional and global commitment. With the defeat of Daesh, and after overcoming the risk of fragmentation, the Government of Iraq must now focus on reconstruction, reforms and reconciliation. I hope the upcoming elections will consolidate this progress.
At the recent Paris and Rome conferences, the international community reaffirmed its support for Lebanon’s sovereignty, stability and state security institutions.
It is absolutely essential to avoid a new Israel-Hezbollah conflict that could inevitably result in many more victims and much greater destruction than the last war.
I reiterate the critical importance to act on key principles and commitments on Lebanon, including Security Council resolutions such as 1701, and the policy of disassociation. The dangers of the links to the Syrian conflict are evident in the recent confrontations between Iran and Israel in Syria.
Syria indeed today represents the most serious threat to international peace and security.
In Syria, we see confrontations and proxy wars involving several national armies, a number of armed opposition groups, many national and international militia, foreign fighters from everywhere in the world, and various terrorist organizations.
From the beginning, we have witnessed systematic violations of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and international law tout court — in utter disregard of the letter and spirit of the United Nations Charter.
For eight long years, the people of Syria have endured suffering upon suffering. I reiterate: there is no military solution to the conflict.
The solution must be political through the Geneva intra-Syrian talks, as stipulated in resolution 2254 of the Security Council, in line with the consistent efforts of my Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura.
Syrians have lived through a litany of horrors: atrocity crimes, sieges, starvation, indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, the use of chemical weapons, forced displacement, sexual violence, torture, detention and enforced disappearances. The list goes on.
In a moment of hope, the Security Council adopted resolution 2401 demanding that all parties cease hostilities without delay for a durable humanitarian pause.
Unfortunately, no such cessation of hostilities ever really took place. That is the bleak panorama of Syria today.
In this panorama, I am outraged by the continued reports of the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
I reiterate my strong condemnation of the use of chemical weapons by any party to the conflict and under any circumstances. Their use is abhorrent and a clear violation of international law.
The seriousness of the recent allegations requires a thorough investigation using impartial, independent and professional expertise.
In this regard, I reaffirm my full support for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – the OPCW — and its Fact-Finding Mission in undertaking the required investigation into these allegations.
The Fact-Finding Mission should be granted full access, without any restrictions or impediments to perform its activities. I take note that the Syrian government has requested it and committed to facilitate it.
The first team of the OPCW is already in Syria. A second is expected today or tomorrow. But we need to go further.
In a letter to the Council two days ago, I expressed “my deep disappointment that the Security Council was unable to agree upon a dedicated mechanism to attribute responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in Syria”, following the end of the mandate of the Joint Investigative Mechanism, or JIM.
I want to repeat today that the norms against chemical weapons must be upheld.
As I wrote in the same letter: “Ensuring accountability for a confirmed use of chemical weapons is our responsibility, not least to the victims of such attacks.
A lack of accountability emboldens those who would use such weapons by providing them with the reassurance of impunity. This in turn further weakens the norm proscribing the use of chemical weapons and the international disarmament and non-proliferation architecture as a whole.
I urge all Member States to act responsibly in these dangerous circumstances.
I appeal to the Security Council to fulfil its duties and not give up on efforts to agree upon a dedicated, impartial, objective and independent mechanism for attributing responsibility with regard to the use of chemical weapons. I stand ready to support such efforts.”
Increasing tensions and the inability to reach a compromise in the establishment of an accountability mechanism threaten to lead to a full-blown military escalation.
In my contacts with you — especially with the Permanent Members of the Security Council — I have been reiterating my deep concerns about the risks of the current impasse and stressed the need to avoid the situation spiralling out of control.
This is exactly the risk we face today – that things spiral out of control. It is our common duty to stop it.
Credit: Riccardo Gregori – Penumbria Studio #ijf18
PERUGIA, Italy, Apr 13 2018 (IPS) - The twelfth International Journalism Festival on April 12-15 has drawn 710 speakers from 50 different countries, becoming the biggest journalism festival in Europe.
A panel discussion titled “End poverty, protect the planet, ensure prosperity for all? Food is the answer” took place on the opening day in the Sala del Dottorato hall in the center of Perugia, held under the auspices of the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN).
Lucio Caracciolo, President and Director of MacroGeo and Limes, presented a report prepared by the BCFN Foundation in collaboration with MacroGeo and CMCC (Centro euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici). The report “Food & Migration: Understanding the geopolitical nexus in the Euro-Mediterranean” , is a research tool “to explore through a geopolitical perspective, flows and trends of the current and future nexus of migration and food in specific areas, particularly the Mediterranean countries.”
Caracciolo emphasized the deep links between migration flows and food security in the Mediterranean region and how addressing the latter could be part of the solution to the former.
Luca di Leo, Head of Communications at BCFN, highlighted the crucial importance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN, shedding light on the clear linkages between the 17 SDGs and food choices.
The Director General of IPS Farhana Haque Rahman and IPS Data Analyst Maged Srour participated as panellists.
Food systems are facing the enormous challenge of feeding increasingly growing and urbanised populations generally demanding a more environmentally intensive diet, while restoring and preserving ecosystems for the health of the planet.
Haque Rahman spoke about the urgent need to enhance the capacity of developing country journalists for them to be able to write analytical commentary to enhance awareness of communities on food sustainability and climate change and influence the food choices of the general public while also drawing attention of decision makers to take the right measure on policies.
She highlighted media capacity building and training undertaken by IPS on the SDGs in both developed and developing countries. The IPS Director-General shed light on the importance of giving access to ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) to poor farmers to enable them to better manage planting and marketing their products.
Maged Srour explained the nexus between water and security (the latter in terms of geopolitical security). Srour shared data on water insecurity, specifically in the Mediterranean region, and went on to explain how the increase in variability of water resources also affects the way countries interact.
“Most of the water in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region is actually shared by two or more nations. So, at the moment we also have climate change hitting this area and consequently an increase in water stress. This obviously increases tensions among those states,” he said.
“Climate change, in combination with the increasing population of the world, is definitely a source of instability which could exacerbate migration flows, and could become fertile grounds for extremism and for conflict,” he warned.
The Mediterranean region was at the heart of the panel discussions with most of the speakers discussing the nexus of food security, water security, climate change, migration and geopolitical security in the region.
Ludovica Principato, a researcher at the Barilla Foundation, presented data and in depth analyses on the Food Sustainability Index, which was developed in collaboration between the BCFN Foundation and the Economist Intelligence Unit, to promote knowledge on food sustainability. The index is a global study that measures facts on nutrition, sustainable agriculture and food waste, collecting data from 34 countries across the world.
“Food systems,” said Principato, “are facing the enormous challenge of feeding increasingly growing and urbanised populations generally demanding a more environmentally intensive diet, while restoring and preserving ecosystems for the health of the planet.”
IPS Director General Farhana Haque Rahman spoke about IPS’s work since it was founded in 1964, especially capacity building activities across the world to raise awareness of communities on topics such as food sustainability and climate change. She shed light on the importance of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in the enhancement of sustainable farming and in the overall communication among smallholder farmers to become more productive and consequently climb out of poverty.
Laura Garzoli presented an innovative project which won the 2017 BCFN YES! (Young Earth Solutions) award granted by the BCFN Foundation to encourage innovative projects in the field of food sustainability.
Garzoli’s project, YES!BAT, “promotes Integrated Pest Management strategy to enhance ecosystem services provided by bats in rice agroecosystems”. Employing bat boxes in rice fields, it encourages insect-eating bats into areas where there are few roosting sites
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Latest on the situation along the Israeli-Gaza border (all times local): 7:30 p.m. Gaza's Health Ministry says a 28-year-old Palestinian man has been killed by Israeli fire in a mass protest on the Gaza-Israel border.
(1 of 8) Israeli soldiers are seen as Palestinian demonstrators protest at the Israel Gaza border, Friday, April 13, 2018.
The death brings to 28 the number of protesters killed in two weeks of border protests. In additions, hundreds of Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli fire since March 30. Friday marked the third large-scale protest near the border fence since late March.
6:50 p.m.
The Israeli military estimates that about 10,000 Palestinians participated in the latest round of weekly protests on the Gaza-Israel border and says it's a significantly lower turnout than in previous rallies in the past two weeks.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said Friday that Palestinians repeatedly tried to damage the border fence, throwing several explosives and fire bombs.
Conricus told The Associated Press that the army is trying to "minimize" Palestinian casualties, but that open-fire regulations have not changed.
Gaza health officials say 528 Palestinians were hurt Friday, including 122 by Israeli army fire. Since late March, 27 Palestinians were killed in protests.
Rights groups say Israel's open-fire regulations are unlawful because soldiers can use potentially lethal force against unarmed protesters. The Israeli military says snipers only target the main "instigators."
6:05 p.m.
Gaza's Health Ministry says 528 Palestinians have been wounded in a mass protest on the territory's border with Israel, including 122 protesters wounded by live Israeli army fire.
The ministry says 406 demonstrators suffered other types of injuries Friday, including being hit by rubber-coated steel pellets and being overcome by tear gas.
The ministry says 203 of those hurt were treated at hospitals and the rest at field clinics.
Friday's protest drew thousands of people, the third large-scale demonstration along the volatile border in as many consecutive Fridays.
4:40 p.m.
Gaza's Health Ministry says 363 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli fire or treated for tear gas inhalation in mass protests on the Gaza-Israel border.
The ministry did not provide a breakdown according to types of injuries.
Friday's protest drew thousands of people, the third large-scale demonstration along the volatile border in as many consecutive Fridays.
3:30 p.m.
Gaza's Health Ministry says 112 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli army fire or treated for tear gas inhalation, but did not provide a breakdown.
The injuries were sustained during a mass protest Friday on Gaza's sealed border with Israel, the third in as many consecutive Fridays.
Thousands of Palestinians gathered at five tent camps, several hundred meters (yards) from the border fence. Smaller groups moved closer to the fence, burning Israeli flags, throwing stones and torching tires.
Israeli troops fired live bullets and tear gas.
In all, 27 protesters were killed and hundreds wounded by army fire since late March.
Rights groups say the Israeli military's open-fire regulations are unlawful because soldiers can use potentially lethal force against unarmed protesters. Israel says snipers only target the main "instigators."
2:45 p.m.
Thousands of Palestinians are staging a mass protest along Gaza's sealed border with Israel with some burning Israeli flags, throwing stones and torching tires.
Israeli soldiers are firing tear gas and live bullets from across the border fence.
Gaza health officials say at least nine Palestinians have been wounded in Friday's protest, the third of this scale in two weeks. Since late March, 27 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded by army fire during such rallies.
On Friday, most demonstrators assembled in five tent camps located several hundred meters (yards) from the border fence. Smaller groups moved closer to the fence, throwing stones, torching tires and burning large Israeli flags.
The Israeli military say demonstrators also hurled an explosive device and several fire bombs near the fence.
11:30 a.m.
Palestinians are streaming to tent camps along Gaza's border with Israel for the third of what are to be weekly mass protests until mid-May.
The marches are organized by Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas, but turnout is also being driven by desperation among the territory's 2 million residents.
Marchers protest against a decade-old blockade and assert what they say is a "right of return" of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.
In two weeks, 34 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, including 27 during protests. Israel alleges Hamas is using protests as a cover for attacks. Rights groups say military's open-fire orders are unlawful.
On Friday, hundreds flocked to one of five camps near Gaza City, stepping on a large Israeli flag laid out on the ground at the entrance
![Children, affected by a gas attack, breathe through oxygen masks in the Damascus suburb of Saqba on August 21, 2013 [Reuters/Bassam Khabieh]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/4/19/97e2f29394a84c7ab11774de2c2a3c78_18.jpg "Syria in 2018 is not Iraq in 2003")
