UNRWA demands probe into killing of Gaza mother
12 May 2008
he United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on Sunday demanded that Israel conduct an inquiry into the death of a mother of six during an Israeli army operation in the Gaza Strip last week.
"We have called on the Israeli authorities to carry out an impartial investigation for accountability and for the facts to speak for themselves," Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told AFP.
Wafa al-Daghma, 32, an UNRWA schoolteacher, was killed on Wednesday during an Israeli army raid near her house in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis.
"The IDF (Israeli army) detonated a device near the front door of the house and Wafa was killed in the explosion," Gunness said. "According to preliminary reports, her completely destroyed head was blown off her body."
The Israeli army could not immediately comment on the incident.
Daghma's husband and three of her children were out of the house when the soldiers arrived but her 16-year-old daughter Samira and two of her sons, both under the age of six, were at home.
"Samira heard the explosion -- she saw her mother fall to the ground, and she ran into her room with her two brothers to hide," Gunness said.
After the blast at 4:00 p.m. local time the soldiers occupied the house to use it as a lookout post and stayed until around 11:00 p.m., as the children huddled in the dark without electricity, Gunness said.
An Islamic Jihad fighter was killed and another 20 people, including 10 militants, were wounded in clashes in the area at around the same time, according to Palestinian medics.
"There were gunshots but the children did not know where they came from," Gunness said. "Their cries and screams for their mother went unanswered by the soldiers."
When the soldiers eventually left Samira emerged to find her mother's body and ran to fetch neighbours, who recovered it.
Israel carries out frequent raids on the Gaza Strip, which has been ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement since last June, in a bid to halt rocket attacks on nearby Israeli communities.
UNRWA provides food aid and basic services to some 4.5 million registered Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, including an estimated one million refugees in Gaza, which has been under tight Israeli sanctions for 11 months.
In late April an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun killed a mother and her four children as they were having breakfast.
An army inquiry cleared the troops of any wrongdoing, saying the blast that killed the family was caused by explosives carried by a militant standing outside their front door, who was the target of the strike.