HEBRON, Dozens suffocated today as Israeli forces attacked a funeral procession in Beit Ummar town, north of the city of Hebron, according to a local activist.

Mohammad Awad said that the heavily-armed soldiers sealed off the main entrance of the southern West Bank town and showered the mourners and the pallbearers with volleys of tear gas canisters, causing dozens to suffocate.

Israeli severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement within the occupied West Bank through a complex combination of approximately 500 fixed checkpoints, hundreds of flying checkpoints, settler-only roads, over 200 military bases and various other physical obstructions.

Closures besides to other measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 55-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.

Source: Palestine News & Info Agency