Ging calls for international investigation into IOF killing of civilians in Gaza

[ 17/01/2009 - 05:11 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)--

John Ging, the director of UNRWA operations in Gaza Strip, on Saturday demanded an international and independent investigation in the Israeli occupation forcers' killing of civilians in the Strip.

Ging, addressing a press conference in UN-run Beit Lahia elementary school for boys that was bombed by IOF phosphorous bombs earlier Saturday, said that the world community should decide whether the murder of civilians and children in that school was a war crime.

He said that civilians in Gaza were paying the price and the children and women are the victims of this "bloody violence". Today two innocent children were killed and their mothers' limbs were amputated while 14 others were seriously injured, he elaborated.

Ging asked the international community to protect the Palestinian in the Gaza Strip, adding that there was no safe place in Gaza not even his own home.

He pointed out that those were ordinary people who came to the school asking for protection and fearing murder and did not come to the school to get killed.

The UNRWA official said that those who are responsible for such an act must be brought to account.

Adnan Abu Hasana, the UNRWA spokesman, had earlier demanded the prosecution of those responsible in shelling the agency's institutions and centers in Gaza, stressing that all UNRWA locations were handed to the IOF.

He said in a press release that his agency would not suspend operations but rather would increase its assistance, describing the targeting of the Beit Lahia school as a "serious escalation" on the part of the IOF.

Two Palestinian children were killed in the IOF bombardment of the elementary school that provided shelter for civilians seeking refuge after fleeing their homes out of fear from the IOF incessant pounding of their houses. The mother of the two children was also seriously wounded in the incident.

Medical teams were finding difficulty in reaching the casualties due to the intensive shelling, eyewitnesses reported.

The IOF three weeks onslaught on the Strip had claimed the lives of more than 1200 citizens and wounded more than 5300 others.

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