Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has said his military was acting in self defence during violence on the Gaza border that left dozens of Palestinians dead.

Some 55 were killed and 2,700 wounded by Israeli troops, Palestinian officials said, on the deadliest day of violence since the 2014 Gaza war.

The Palestinian Authority’s leader condemned a “massacre”. The UN spoke of “outrageous human rights violations”.

The violence came as the US opened a controversial embassy in Jerusalem.

The move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv has incensed Palestinians, who claim eastern Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

They see the US move as backing Israeli control over the whole of the city, which Israel regards as its indivisible capital.

The day’s events as they happened
What makes Jerusalem so holy?
Palestinians were demonstrating on Monday as they have been for six weeks as part of a protest, orchestrated by Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas, called the “Great March of Return”.

However, Monday’s protests – and more planned for Tuesday – are the culmination, as they mark the anniversary of Israel’s creation in 1948 and what Palestinian’s term the Nakba or Catastrophe, referring to the hundreds of thousands of their people who subsequently fled their homes or were displaced in the war that followed.