Gaza City, July 18 (RHC)-- Israeli forces have shot and wounded a Palestinian teenager in the southern Gaza Strip in yet another act of violence against Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

According to witnesses, Mansour Abu Taima was hit with a live bullet in his left foot in the city of Abasan al-Kabira on Friday evening, Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported. The 14-year-old teen was taken to the European Gaza Hospital, where his injury was said to be moderate.

At least 11 incidents of Israeli use of live fire against Palestinians were reported last week in the Israeli-imposed so-called access-restricted areas or the buffer zone in the Gaza Strip, prohibiting Palestinians from accessing large swathes of their land and sea.

A total of 38 incidents of shooting and incursions by Israelis into the blockaded coastal sliver as well as arrests were also reported in March alone, according to the latest figures released by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza City-based organization dedicated to protecting human rights.

The PCHR has described the so-called access-restricted areas as "illegal" under international law, saying: "The precise area designated by Israel as a 'buffer zone' is not clear and this Israeli policy is typically enforced with live fire."

Tel Aviv imposed an all-out land, aerial, and naval blockade on Gaza in June 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty in the enclave. The siege has turned the densely-populated territory -- home to some 1.7 million Palestinians -- into the largest open-air prison in the world.