The Israeli air force fired a missile at a Palestinian vehicle travelling in the Shuja’eyya neighborhood in northern Gaza, killing the two passengers and two children, age 17 and 8, who were standing nearby.
Ahmed Sousi, 17, and eight-year-old Raed Al-Batch, were walking on the sidewalk when the Israeli missile struck a car on the road next to them. The two children were not the first to be killed in Gaza today. Two brothers, age 14 and 15, were killed earlier by an explosion of a previously undetonated device left in their neighborhood by Israeli troops.
The two passengers who were killed were members of the Islamic Jihad Palestinian resistance group, and were identified as Munir Abu Sukar and Iyad Abu Shaluf. The two bystanders also killed in the attack have not yet been identified, but local sources report that one was a sixteen year old boy. Eyewitnesses report that seven people were injured by shrapnel from the missile, many of them children.
In the ongoing “aerial assassinations” campaign being carried out by the Israeli military, 40 Palestinians have been killed since the January 25th Palestinian elections by Israeli missiles. Many of those killed have been innocent bystanders and children. This technique of assassination has been condemned by the international community, and violates all human rights agreements that Israel has signed.
But the Israeli “war on militants” continues, even as Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights groups condemn the practice of “aerial assassinations”.
