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Israeli blockade causes huge damage to Gaza industries: official

Xinhua, April 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

As much as 80 percent of Gaza's industries and factories were either damaged or closed over some eight years of Israeli blockade on the Strip, a senior Palestinian official said on Thursday.

Jamal Khudari, head of a popular committee to resist the blockade, said in an emailed press statement that the annual economical loss in the industrial sector in Gaza reached 150 million U.S. dollars due to the consequences of the blockade.

The blockade was imposed on the Gaza Strip right after Islamic Hamas movement's violent takeover of the coastal enclave in the summer of 2007. Israel also considered Hamas rule a hostile entity.

Since then, Israel had also waged three military offensives, leaving a total of 5,000 Palestinians killed, with huge destruction in housing, industries and infrastructure.

However, Israel in late May 2010 eased the blockade after the Israeli commandos attack on the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla and killed nine Turkish activists heading to Gaza to defy the blockade.

"Although Israel said it relaxed the siege, but it still bans the entrance of the basic kinds of raw materials used in industry, agriculture and construction," said Khudar, adding "this is why rates of poverty reached its climax in Gaza." Endit