UNRWA strongly condemns death and injury to Gazan refugees – UNRWA press release

UNRWA Strongly Condemns Death

and Injury to Gazan Refugees

Gaza – Samia Mahmoud al-Sharif, a five-year-old refugee girl from the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, was killed in Tuesday night’s Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip.

Her death was followed less than 24 hours later by that of Fatima Ahmed, a 35-year-old refugee and resident of Khan Younis, also killed by an Israeli air strike. Two of Fatima Ahmed’s children, Farah, 2 years old and Khaled, eighteen months old, were seriously injured with shrapnel wounds to the head. Also killed in the attack was Zakaria Ahmed, 45, a refugee. Eleven more refugees were wounded.

In addition to the three deaths on Tuesday evening, fifteen were injured, among them a refugee father, Ahmed El-Batran and his two children, Asem, age two, and Rabab, age eleven. Other wounded refugees include Walid El-Samari, Nazmi Barakat, Ayman Dababesh, Imad Abu Hamadeh.

Karen AbuZayd, UNRWA Commissioner-General, stated: “I was extremely saddened to learn of these tragedies, so soon after the killings on Gaza beach. As UNRWA was commemorating World Refugee Day with a focus on the children of Gaza as the hope for the future, young children were losing their lives in air strikes. And now, on the evening following World Refugee Day, more refugee families are in mourning. Death and injury to innocent civilian life must be condemned in the strongest terms.”

Extrajudicial killings carried out in crowded areas of the Gaza Strip inevitably endanger the lives of innocent civilians, many of them refugees, and many of them women and children.

Ends