Situation in the OPT – Letter from Algeria

DOCUMENT S/19542

Letter dated 24 February 1988 from the representative of Algeria

to the President of the Security Council

[Original: English]

[26 February 1988]

I have the honour to transmit herewith two letters dated 22 February 1988 addressed to you by Mr. Zehdi Labib Terzi, Permanent Observer of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United Nations.

I kindly request that you circulate these letters as a document of the Security Council.

(Signed) Hocine DJOUDI

Permanent Representative of Algeria

to the United Nations

ANNEX I

Letter dated 22 February 1988 from the observer of the

Palestine Liberation Organization to the

President of the Security Council

I am asked by Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to bring the following to your urgent attention. On 16 February 1988, The New York Times reported that on 5 February 1988 four Palestinian youths had been buried alive by Israeli occupation soldiers, in what the Israeli Government was calling an isolated incident. We would like to inform you that on 9 February, 30 year-old Yaseen Abdul Qader Milhem, from Halhoul, Hebron, was arrested by Israeli occupation soldiers, who tried to bury him alive. When they failed to do so, they brutally beat him, resulting in his hospitalization at the Aliya Hospital in Hebron. On 20 February two Palestinian youths from Khan Yunis were found buried alive. Seventeen year-old Saleh Mousa Hamad and 18 year-old Adel Masoud have been hospitalized in serious condition, and the Intemational Committee of the Red Cross has been asked to visit them in hospital.

The recurrence of this Nazi-like practice of burying people alive proves without doubt that the earlier incident of burying Palestinians alive was not an isolated incident but a new phase in Israel's "iron-fist" policy, along with the use of live ammunitions, rubber bullets and tear-gas and the breaking of bones and the smashing of skulls.

ANNEX II

Letter dated 22 February 1988 from the observer of the Palestine

Liberation Organization to the President of the Security Council

I am asked by Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to bring the enclosed UNRWA Hospital Referral No. 988405 to your immediate attention. 1/

The Referral is for a 3 month-old baby girl, Rana Yussef Adwan of Rafah, in the Israeli occupation Gaza Strip. The Referral notes that Rana died as a result of respiratory damage caused by the use of tear-gas.

Notes

1/   The Referral is not reproduced in the present Supplement and may be consulted in the files of the Secretariat.