RAMALLAH, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of Palestinian protesters were injured on Saturday evening during clashes with Israeli soldiers in the village of Kofor Qadoom, east of the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia, medics said.
Eyewitnesses said that the clashes broke out when dozens of Palestinian protesters organized a peaceful weekly rally in the village against the expansion of the Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
Israeli army forces fired tear gas canisters and rubber-coated metal gunshots to disperse the protesters' rally, after they threw stones at the soldiers, according to the witnesses.
Murad Ishteiwi, the coordinator of the popular resistance in the village, told reporters that the protesters were injured and treated by local paramedics in the village.
There has been no immediate Israeli official comment to the protests in the village, although activists have been organizing weekly anti-Israeli settlement protests.
Ishteiwi said that the demonstrators called on the Israeli army to open a main road in the village that remained closed for 16 years.
Meanwhile, dozens of Palestinians were injured during clashes with Israeli soldiers that broke out in the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah, according to the official Palestinian news agency (WAFA).
The news agency quoted Palestinian security sources as saying that an Israeli army force stormed the village and fired tear gas canisters at the Palestinians, adding that dozens suffered suffocation after inhaling tear gas.
