Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Blood on their Hands: Summary of Another IOF Child Killing
Another summary I've made which is taken from Palestine Center for Human Rights, Gaza's Blood On Their Hands: Child Killings From the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the Gaza Strip, June 2007-June2008. The sixty-four page report was released on October 21 and may be found here. One of my first summaries of a horrific child killing was posted yesterday here.
Abdel Khader Yousef Ashour, 13, and Mansour Al-Kafarna met their deaths on August 21, 2007. They were playing in an orchard in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip next to an Agricultural School. Both kids were killed instantly by a surface-to-surface missile, courtesy of Israel's Occupation Forces.
Abdel Khader's mother heard an explosion at 5:45 PM. She was just a few hundred meters from the school where she knew her son had been playing football. As she headed toward the school, she asked a man she'd met along the way if he'd seen a boy in blue. He told her that the boy in blue had been "dismembered." Another boy playing with the two who were killed suffered shrapnel wounds. There were several other children in the proximity of the schoolyard. No rockets had been fired from the neighborhood the day that the boys were targeted. The parents are convinced that the IOF deliberately targeted the innocent children as a warning "to pressure local parents into preventing rockets to be fired from Beit Hanoun towards Israel."
In five days, beginning on February 27, 2008, Israel killed twenty-seven children in Gaza. Half of them were killed in Jabalia in twenty-four hours.
"The circumstances of child deaths during Operation Winter Heat strongly and consistently indicate that children were deliberately targeted throughout the operation." On February 28, a group of boys were playing football near their homes. IOF launched a missile, killing four of them, Mohammed Na'im Hammouda, 9; Ali Munir Dardouna, 8; Dardouna Deib Dardouna, 12, and Omar Hussein Dardouna, 14. Three other boys were seriously injured. PCHR investigations indicate that there was no resistance activity at the time the boys were killed. They were playing in an open area in a residential district that was "clearly visible" to the IOF in the aircraft which targeted them.
Abdel Khader Yousef Ashour, 13, and Mansour Al-Kafarna met their deaths on August 21, 2007. They were playing in an orchard in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip next to an Agricultural School. Both kids were killed instantly by a surface-to-surface missile, courtesy of Israel's Occupation Forces.
Abdel Khader's mother heard an explosion at 5:45 PM. She was just a few hundred meters from the school where she knew her son had been playing football. As she headed toward the school, she asked a man she'd met along the way if he'd seen a boy in blue. He told her that the boy in blue had been "dismembered." Another boy playing with the two who were killed suffered shrapnel wounds. There were several other children in the proximity of the schoolyard. No rockets had been fired from the neighborhood the day that the boys were targeted. The parents are convinced that the IOF deliberately targeted the innocent children as a warning "to pressure local parents into preventing rockets to be fired from Beit Hanoun towards Israel."
In five days, beginning on February 27, 2008, Israel killed twenty-seven children in Gaza. Half of them were killed in Jabalia in twenty-four hours.
"The circumstances of child deaths during Operation Winter Heat strongly and consistently indicate that children were deliberately targeted throughout the operation." On February 28, a group of boys were playing football near their homes. IOF launched a missile, killing four of them, Mohammed Na'im Hammouda, 9; Ali Munir Dardouna, 8; Dardouna Deib Dardouna, 12, and Omar Hussein Dardouna, 14. Three other boys were seriously injured. PCHR investigations indicate that there was no resistance activity at the time the boys were killed. They were playing in an open area in a residential district that was "clearly visible" to the IOF in the aircraft which targeted them.
