At approximately 10:30 am on Saturday February 7, 2004, Israeli apache helicopters fired a missile on a car in the Wahda Street in Gaza City.
One of the two persons in the targeted car and one child was killed, while ten bystanders were injured.
According to field investigations, 11-year-old Tariq Majdi Al Susi was killed by the attack while on his way to school.
Aziz Mahmud Al Shami, who was driving the car, sustained severe wounds and died later in the hospital.
It is worth mentioning that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) also killed four Palestinians during an incursion into Tel Al Sultan neighborhood, in Rafah on the same day.
According to the Israeli Army’s spokesman, two of these Palestinians were “wanted”.
The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights is gravely concerned by Israel’s policy of extra-judicial killings, which frequently resulted in loss of innocent civilian life and property.
The Center affirms that these crimes are in grave breaches of the International Law and the Humanitarian Law and violate the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, which emphasize that extra-judicial executions are in no case permitted, even in situations of war.
As such, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights calls upon the International Community to provide effective protection for the Palestinian population of the OPT.
The Center calls the High Contracting Parties to Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War to reconvene and ensure the necessary respect of the Convention in the OPT.