Israel’s murder of 10-year old Palest. girl condemned

The Foreign Office condemned Israel over the brutal crime that claimed the life of a 10-year-old girl in the village of Yamun near Jenin during a raid that the Israeli Occupation forces claimed to be in search of wanted fighters.

Foreign Office minister, Douglas Alexander, called to the Israeli government to show restraint.

"We condemn the killing on 17 March of a Palestinian child in the Occupied Territories. Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories must be proportionate and in accordance with international law," he said.

Akbar Zayed was accompanied by her uncle on her way to a clinic to have stitches removed from her chin when they both approached an Israeli military operation near the town of Jenin.

At the hospital, where, Kamal Zayed, Akbar's uncle is being treated after he got gun shots in his arm and leg, said that the Israeli soldiers opened fire on his car before he had the chance to respond to their orders.

The Israeli army, which only confirmed that an elite Border Police unit that was in search of Palestinian fighters opened fire at a suspicious cab that approached an area, claimed that the occupying soldiers asked Akbar's uncle to stop and when they refused to stop they opened fire at the car's wheels.

"I saw them behind the fence. There were more than 30 soldiers. The first bullet hit my niece. She got a bullet in the head from the very beginning," he recalled from his hospital bed.

"I started to yell ... opened the door and started taking her out of the car to get her into the clinic. They (the soldiers) yelled at me to put her on the ground, started shooting in the air. I don't know what they shot at," Zayed said.

The girl was killed in a hail of bullets in the northern West Bank, her family describes.

"They have no idea how much I loved her," Abder, Akbar's father, said.

Soldiers later pulled Zayed out of the ambulance and interrogated him for more than two hours before allowing him get the medical treatment he needed.

The army then, according to residents, partially destroyed a house in the village while rounding up members of the Zayed family before they detained them at a nearby military base.



The condemnation came a few days after British monitors pulled out from a Palestinian jail in Jericho, which gave a way for the Israeli army carry out its barbaric raid against the prison last week.

The fact that the British monitors withdrew just a few hours before the Israeli forces attacked Jericho jail prompted accusations of British collusion.