"Who is safer now that Khadra Abu Moatiq and her 4 young children are dead?”

Ramallah, 28-04-08: "A sickening tragedy" was how Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, Secretary General of the PNI described the killing of a mother and her 4 children in an Israeli military attack on the Gaza Strip this morning.  The deaths have brought the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military since Annapolis to 418, including 59 children.

Khadra Abu Moatiq and her children Musab (1), Hana‘ (3), Saleh (4), and Rudaina (6) were killed when an Israeli military artillery shell tore through their home near Beit Hanoun.  Two other Palestinians were also killed in the attack, including 17 year-old Ayoub Atallah.

"The killing of innocent women and children in their homes is one of the most shocking consequences of the siege and attacks on the Gaza Strip, which the Israeli government is carrying out under the pretext of security,” said Dr. Barghouthi.  "But tell me who is safer now that Khadra Abu Moatiq and her 4 young children are dead?”

Dr. Barghouthi also underlined that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth, with 1.5 million people crammed into a space of just 365 square kilometers, adding that any military attack on the Strip was almost certain to kill and/or injure civilians.

Coming just days after Israel‘s rejection of a comprehensive, reciprocal and simultaneous ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and after a litany of Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians since Annapolis, Dr. Barghouthi concluded that that attack was yet further proof of the Israeli government‘s fundamental lack of disregard for Palestinian lives and the absences of an Israeli partner for peace, and that is was the outcome of an aggressive Apartheid system of oppression.

Israeli violations since Annapolis in figures