Civilian Deaths and Injuries in Gaza from Palestinian Rockets

Sabbah Abu Khusa, 12, and Hanein `Ali Abu Khusa, 5, in Beit Lahiya

On December 26, at around 3 p.m., a Palestinian rocket struck a house in an area north of Beit Lahiya, Gaza, about 2.5 kilometers from the armistice line with Israel, killing two cousins, Sabbah Abu Khusa, 12, and Hanein `Ali Abu Khusa, 5. The rocket also wounded another cousin, one-and-a-half-year-old Ula.

Hassan Musa Abu Khusa, Sabbah’s grandfather, told Human Rights Watch that he was sitting in a tent about 30 meters from the house. “I saw a ball of smoke and ran over. I saw the girls’ bodies on the ground. [The rocket] destroyed the ceiling and the shrapnel went into the concrete walls.”[46]  Hassan Abu Khusa described the rocket as about one meter in length and roughly the same diameter as a steel pipe that was near the site of the rocket strike; Human Rights Watch examined the pipe and found it to be 120 mm.  He said a Hamas policeman came the next day to take the remains of the rocket and said they were going to determine who was responsible for firing it. “After he left, the war started and we never heard from him again,” Abu Khusa said. “We got the compensation given to all victims of the war.”[47]

Tel al-Hawa

On December 24, a rocket destroyed the bedroom of a family living in the Tel al-Hawa area in southern Gaza City. One man, a lawyer, was wounded critically. “Shrapnel hit me in the head, the right arm, and leg. Two small fragments are still in my skull,” he told Human Rights Watch.[48] “My doctor told me I should start celebrating a new birthday – I was unconscious for two weeks.” He said his wife and two-year-old child, who were with him, were badly traumatized though not harmed physically. He expressed anger that what he called “the factional media,” referring to the Hamas-controlled Al-Aqsa radio and television stations, initially claimed it was “an internal explosion – as if I’d been playing with explosives. They changed their story later after my friends and relatives pressed them. There are dozens of these cases. You face a taboo on directly criticizing these accidents.”

The brother of this victim told Human Rights Watch that after the incident no armed group came to apologize. “I was next door in my home when this all happened,” he said. “When one of those responsible tried to bargain for the shrapnel, I said that if no one took responsibility I will go to the courts, so Hamas came to me privately and admitted it.”[49]

Shajai’ya

A doctor in the Shajai’ya area east of Gaza City, and near the armistice line with Israel, told Human Rights Watch that a rocket fell on his home at around 6 a.m. on March 4. “It was Saraya al-Quds,” he said, referring to the militia of the Islamic Jihad group. “The rocket had nothing on it but my neighbors saw the guy who launched it; they knew his name. He had driven into the area on a donkey cart with the rocket and launcher.”[50] The doctor said that the rocket damaged two bedrooms in his house and left him with an abrasion on his face. His wife and three children and several other persons in the house were unharmed. “There were eight of us in the house,” he said. “The house on one side of us has eight people, the house on the other side has 30.”