Population in Palestinian territories at 3.76m

An official in the Palestinian Central Statistic Bureau in this West Bank city said Saturday that the Palestinian population in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east al-Qods stood at about 3.76 million.

Luai Shabanah, director general of the statistic bureau, told a news conference held in Ramallah on Saturday that the Palestinian population increased by around one million in 10 years, which stood at 2.89 million in June 1967.

Of the 3.76 million Palestinians living on the Palestinian territories, some 2.345 million were living in the West Bank and east al-Qods, and the other 1.416 million living in Gaza, Shabanah said.

He said that 208,000 Palestinians are living in the eastern part of al-Qods.

 Shabanah added that in 1997, Israel had prevented the Palestinian Central Statistics Bureau from conducting a door-to-door statistics, mainly in east al-Qods.

But "this time, volunteers all over the Palestinian territories, conducted actual count working discretely to avoid confrontations with Israeli authorities," Shabanah said.