On Wednesday 5 February 2002, the Israeli Occupation Forces killed two nurses in Al Wafa Hospital in Gaza City.
Eyewitnesses told Al Mezan’s fieldworkers that two Israeli helicopters opened fire on the hospital area while ground forces penetrated it.
IOF broke into Al Ghul family’s home- after blowing its gate- and detained the family and used the house’s roof as a watchtower.
Muhammad Abu Ryaleh, who works at Al Wafa Hospital, said that nurses and doctors moved around the patients after a sound of an explosion was heard in the area.
Two Nurses entered room 214 in the first floor of the hospital building, which hosts three patients.
They were nursing a patient when they fell down.
Medical sources reported that the two nurses died from one bullet, which went through 21-year-old Abdul Karim Libad’s chest and settled in his partner’s, Umar Saad ad-Din Hassan, chest; also 21 years old.
The same sources added that the bullet is not of the heavy kind used by helicopter gunships and that it seems to be a sniper’s shot.
It should be noted that the Al Wafa Hospital has a Red Crescent’s sign in an obvious place and that the two nurses were shot while they were dressed in the nurse uniforms and had their signs on.
Two other persons were injured in the incident; one of them is in a critical condition.
In the southern town of khan Yunis IOF attacked a medical team from Medicins Sans Frontieres while they were trying to enter the area of Al Mawasi, an isolated area in the town, to provide medical aid for civilians.
Israeli soldiers prohibited the delegation from entering the area and thrashed them despite the fact that the organization coordinated their entrance with IOF.
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights emphasizes that such acts constitute war crimes under the international humanitarian law, which prohibits targeting hospitals or medical teams in all circumstances.
This crime adds to the numerous crimes that had systematically been perpetrated by IOF in the OPTs.
Medical teams and ambulances were frequently attacked by IOF in the past.
These crimes call for urgent international intervention, especially by the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 1949, to end Israel’s crimes against Palestinian civilians and provide effective protection for them and their property in the OPTs.
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