Killing Deliberately 'By Mistake'

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (IAP): As more than a million Palestinian boys and girls returned to school after the summer recess, the Israeli army restarted the murderous killing of Palestinian civilians, including school children.

The latest spate of wanton killings began around midnight on 28 September with a massacre of an entire family at the Sheikh Ejlin village just south of Gaza City.

There, an Israeli tank fired several “dart shells” at a peaceable Bedouin encampment where several fruit pickers were asleep.

The deadly artillery flechetes, each packed with some 3,000 inch-long arrows, killed four members of the same family, a mother, her two sons, and their cousin.

Ruwaida al Hajeen, 55, her sons, Ashraf, 22, and Nihad, 17, and 20-year-old Muhammed al Hajeen, died instantly as thousands of the deadly arrows pierced all parts of their bodies. Eight other people were injured, including a 3-year-old child, who sustained a serious wound.

“We were sleeping in our homes when suddenly, we heard a bomb, Israeli tanks were invading the area, firing and shelling in all directions, and then I saw the al-Hajeen’s encampment on fire,” said Ismael Shamallakh, a neighbor whose house was also damaged.

The 120 mm shell is fired from a tank and can be set to explode in the air at a specific distance and releases its load of darts in all directions, often causing instant death.