On Friday, 25 July 2008, at approximately 8:20 pm, an explosion occurred near Al Hilal Cafeteria in coastal Gaza City's Sheikh Ejlin neighborhood.
According to the field investigations by Al Mezan, an explosive device that was set near a white Audi vehicle exploded while it was stationed east to the Cafeteria.
The vehicle is owned by the deputy of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr.
Khalil Al Haiya.
The bomb was place in the ground between the vehicle and the Cafeteria and exploded while a number of Hamas activists and members of its military wing, Ezadin Al-Qassam Brigades, were in the Cafeteria.
According to medical sources, the explosion claimed the lives of six people, including five Hamas activists and one girl child.
28 people were also injured in the explosion.
The persons who were killed were identified as: 5-year-old Sirin Ismail Assafadi; 27-year-old Nihad (Ammar) Mohammed Mssabeh; 32-year-old Iyad Abdel Majid Al Haiya; 33-year-old Osama Said Al Hilo; 37-year-old Nidal Khalil Al Mbaiyadh; 37-year-old Hassan Mohammed Al Hilo.
This explosion took place less than 24 hours after two explosive devices were detonated; the first being near the house of Dr.
Marawan Abu Ras, Legislative Council member and head of the Federation of Palestine Scholars, and the second near Al Jazeera Cafeteria.
The latter explosion claimed the life of one person.
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights expresses its strongest condemnation of these crimes.
They constitute a grave escalation in the internal security situation in the Gaza Strip.
The Center regrets that people died in these explosions and sends its sympathy to their families.
Al Mezan calls on the dismissed government in Gaza, which is the primary duty-holder vis-à-vis security and human rights, to promptly, and effectively investigate these crimes, to make public the circumstances surrounding these crimes and to bring to justice their perpetrators within the boundaries of Palestinian law.
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