Israeli occupation troops killed two Palestinians and wounded scores of other taking part in weekly Gaza border protests on Friday, medics said, as Egyptian mediators tried to clinch a truce deal that would calm the impoverished Strip. After a more than four-month surge in confrontations, Israel this week eased its clampdown on the Gaza Strip border and fishing waters. Cairo said it was finalising the details of a longer-term accommodation between Israel and the dominant Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Some 20,000 people took part in Friday's protests, which took place a few hundred meters from the fence, though dozens came closer, with some rolling burning tyres, witnesses said. Medics said Israeli gunfire killed two men and wounded at least 270 other Palestinians, 50 of them with live bullets. Israel besieged Gaza since 2007, waging three wars against the strip 2008, 2012 and 2014, leaving more than 3000 Palestinians killed, thousands injured and infrastructure in shambles. Friday's deaths brought to 170 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the weekly protests began on March 30. The campaign is pressing for rights to land that Palestinians lost to Israel in the 1948 war of its foundation, and for an end to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. *This story was edited by Ahram Online.