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© AFPIsraeli soldiers drive a tank during a drill near the besieged Gaza Strip, June 7, 2015.
According to witnesses and local residents, four bulldozers escorted by military vehicles on Tuesday morning crossed into the Palestinian side of the border fence in the east of the city of Khan Younis and leveled fields belonging to local Palestinians, Ma'an News Agency reported.

Sources say Israeli soldiers used smoke grenades to conceal the movement of bulldozers. Palestinian farmers also left their fields, fearing possible shooting by the Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli regime repeatedly launches cross-border raids into Gaza on security pretexts, often razing land near the border in the so-called buffer zone it maintains on the Gaza side of the border.

Israeli forces have also frequently opened fire on Palestinians who approach the so-called buffer zone.

In July alone, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights counted more than two dozen incidents of shootings, arrests and incursions into the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Israel launched a deadly war on Gaza in the summer of 2014.
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© AFPPalestinian children in Gaza City play next to the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Israeli war of summer 2014 on Gaza, on August 25, 2015.
Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, lost their lives and some 11,000 were injured in the July-August 2014 war. Gaza health officials say the dead victims included over 570 children and nearly 260 women.

The UN has already said Israel was responsible for the deadly bombings of several UN institutions, including schools, in which displaced Palestinian civilians were sheltering.

Gaza has been blockaded since June 2007. The has caused a decline in the standard of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.