Palestinian Girl Shot While At School Dies

Palestinian Girl Shot While At Un School Dies Of Injuries From Gunfire

Just two months shy of her tenth birthday, Ghadeer Jaber Mokheimer died today of injuries sustained when, sitting in a United Nations school, she was hit by gunfire from an Israeli military position on the outskirts of Khan Younis camp, the UN relief agency helping Palestinians (UNRWA) reported.

The grade five pupil, shot yesterday, is the second young child in recent weeks to die after being hit by gunfire while attending an UNRWA school. Ten year old Raghda Adnan Al-Assar died on 22 September, two weeks after being struck unconscious by a bullet in the head.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen decried the deaths, calling them “horrific by anyone’s standards.”

He also pointed out that beyond the campuses of educational facilities, “the pace of child deaths in Gaza has been accelerating terribly in recent weeks.”

Almost every day, he said, “The most basic of the rights of the child – to life – is now being violated.”

UNRWA has repeatedly called on the Israeli military to stop firing at its schools. There have now been four such incidents in under two years, a sign of the Israeli army’s indiscriminate and dangerous military tactics in civilian areas. The Agency is concerned that parents are growing increasingly fearful about sending their children to school in Gaza because of the level of violence they experience on their journeys and once they arrive.

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