Palestinian School Girl killed on her way to school

Tuesday October 5th, 2004

Eman Sameer Al-Hams, a 13 year old Palestinian school girl from the Yebna refugee camp, was shot and killed by 20 live bullets while she was on her way to an UNRWA school in the Gaza strip city of Rafah , near the Palestinian-Egyptian borders.

According to witnesses, the area was quiet at the time. Iman was shot at from an Israeli army observation tower in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood of the town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt. Iman died instantly.
The soldiers thought that the girl’s backpack contained explosives when of course the backpack had what every normal school backpack has:books and pens.

According to witnesses, the soldiers were at a close distance to the girl and could see that she was wearing her school uniform.

Dr Ali Musa, the head of Abu Yousef An-Najar hospital in the Gaza Strip, said that "the girl’s body was riddled with bullets from head to toe,including 5 bullets in the head".

Palestinian children are not safe from Israeli bullets be it at their homes, in the street, or even at UN- schools. On September 27, 2004, Raged Adnan al-Assar died of the wounds she had sustained when she was shot by an Israeli soldier as she sat at her desk at the UNRWA Elementary School in Khan Younis on September 7, 2004 .

As Israel’s "Day of Penitence" operation has entered its seventh day,the total number of Palestinians killed is at least 77, many of them being civilians.

in another incident, Israeli troops assassinated two Palestinians in a raid by undercover Israeli unit in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Monday,witnesses and media reports said.

Palestinian security sources said that undercover and regular Israeli troops ambushed the two men in a shop in the Ramallah marketplace, and that two men (28 and 35 year old) were killed.

For more information, please see:
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/