UN Secretary General calls for investigation over deadly Gaza clashes

The UN Secretary General has called for "an independent and transparent investigation" into Friday's deadly clashes on the border between Gaza and Israel.

At least 17 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured - according to Palestinian officials - as Israeli forces confronted one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations in recent years.

The United Nations Security Council was briefed on the violence and condemned it after an emergency session.

A spokesman for Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, said he wanted an investigation.

"He also appeals to those concerned to refrain from any act that could lead to further casualties and in particular any measures that cold place civilians in harm's way," Farhan Haq said.

The Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour told the council at least 17 Palestinian civilians were killed and more than 1,400 injured.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered an encampments a few hundred metres from the Israeli security barrier with the Hamas-run enclave.

The demonstrators are demanding that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to towns and villages their families fled from, or were driven out of, when the state of Israel was created in 1948.

More than 100 army sharpshooters had been deployed along the Gaza border in anticipation of trouble.

Heavy Israeli earth-moving vehicles added to a series of dirt mounds on the Israeli side of the fence against any mass attempt to breach the barrier.

One of the dead, a Gaza farmer, was killed before the protest started by an Israeli tank shell in the southern Gaza Strip.

Hamas, the militant group that dominates the Gaza Strip, has accused Israel of trying to intimidate Palestinians by killing the farmer and by urging them not to participate in the protests.