Ghadeer Jaber Mkheemar was a 10-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers while sitting at her desk at an UNRWA school in the Gaza Strip on October 12 2004. The fifth grader was shot in the stomach by Israeli soldiers firing from a military post at the Gush Katif Israeli settlement that overlooks the Khan Yunis Palestinian refugee camp and UNRWA Co-Ed Elementary D School in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army claimed that its soldiers opened fire on the school after being attacked by a Palestinian firing mortar shells.

Ghadeer was one of between 104 and 133 Palestinian fatalities killed by the Israel Defense Force during the two weeks of Invasion of Gaza, the most extensive Israeli military invasion of the northern Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Second Palestinian uprising in 2000.

Incident

At 10:45 in the morning, Israeli soldiers fired two shots at the school. One of the shots struck Ghadeer Mkheemer in the stomach, critically injuring her. She was immediately rushed to a hospital for emergency surgery but she died the following day.

The UNRWA Commissioner-General, Peter Hansen, called the killing of Ghadeer Mkheemer, the second act of its kind within the month, "horrific by anyone’s standards." He said that "the pace of child deaths in Gaza has been accelerating terribly in recent weeks," and that almost every day "the most basic of the rights of the child – to life – is now being violated."

Mr. Hansen said that the Israeli military has attacked UNRWA schools four times during the past two years. UNRWA has repeatedly called on the Israeli army to stop firing at its schools, an example of the Israel's indiscriminate and dangerous military tactics in civilian areas, according to UNRWA. [1]

See Also

• Operation Days of Penitence Fatalities
• Operation Days of Penitence
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Arab-Israeli conflict
• Israeli terrorism
• Atrocities
• Al-Aqsa Intifada
• State Terrorism
• Iman Darweesh Al Hams
• Muhammad al-Durrah
• Israeli violence against Palestinian children

External Links

• Sharon Hastens to Repair Gaps in Coalition (New York Times)
• Palestinian girl shot while at UN school in Gaza Strip dies of injuries (UN News Center)
• Israeli gunfire hits 11-year old girl sitting at her desk in an UNRWA school (Electronic Intifada)