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| PCHR Palestinian Centre for Human Rights PRESS RELEASE |
Ref: 158/2005
Date: 09 December 2005
Time: 11:00 GMT
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue to Escalate their War Crimes against Palestinians
Two Palestinians Extra-judicially killed in the northern Gaza Strip, and 4 Civilians from the same Family injured east of Khan Yunis
IOF committed an extra-judicial assassination in the northern Gaza Strip in the evening of Thursday, 8 December 2005. Two Palestinians, both members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, were killed. A third member of the Brigades and a child suffered moderate to serious injuries in the attack. This war crime was committed approximately two and a half hours after IOF war planes bombarded agricultural land to the east of Khan Yunis. Four members of one family were injured in the bombardment. These crimes Gaza came less than 24 hours after IOF assassinated an activist in the Popular Resistance Committees in Rafah. It is noted that the latest escalation by IOF is an implementation of the decisions of Israeli political and military leaderships to escalate the targeting of Palestinian activists throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).
PCHR’s preliminary investigations on the assassination in Northern Gaza indicate that at approximately 15:50 in the afternoon of 8 December 2005, an IOF war plane fired one rocket at three Palestinian activists in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – Martyr Nabil Mas’oud Formations. They were sitting in a citrus grove surrounding the home of one of the targeted persons in southern Beit Lahya. Two were killed on the spot, and the third suffered serious injures. The two killed were:
– Eyad Mohammad Ibrahim Qadas (33)
– Eyad Hussein So’oud El-Najjar (33)
A 6-years old girl was injured in a nearby house as a result of shrapnel from the air strike. In addition, a number of nearby homes sustained minor damages.
Approximately 2.5 hours before the attack in Beit Lahya, IOF planes fired rockets at agricultural fields adjacent to the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east of Khan Yunis. IOF military sources claimed that the strike targeted launching sites used by armed Palestinians to fire mortars and home-made rockets at the western Negev. No armed Palestinians were injured in the strike. However, 4 civilians from one family (a man, his sister, and his two daughters) suffered minor injuries as they were walking in the targeted area.
PCHR strongly condemns the extra-judicial assassination and bombardment. The new wave of escalation characterized by action and reaction began after the Israeli Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz, issued orders to IOF to start a military operation in the northern West Bank and Gaza Strip, including arrests and extra-judicial assassinations against Islamic Jihad activists. These orders were issued before the explosion in Netanya on 5 December 2005, which led to further escalation. PCHR believes that the policies of military incursions; willful and extra-judicial killings; and arbitrary arrests, implemented by IOF almost daily in the West Bank, serve to escalate tension in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and threaten the lives of Palestinian civilians. Consequently, PCHR calls upon the international community to cease their silence in light of such attacks, and reiterates its call for the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to fulfill their obligations to ensure protection for Palestinian civilians in the OPT.
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