Gaza teacher killed in front of children

Blast kills Gaza teacher in front of her children
By Donald Macintyre in Khan Younis
Monday, 12 May 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/blast-kills-gaza-teacher-in-front-of-her-children-826265.html

SALEH JADALLAH

Wafer Shaker al Daghma was with three of her children when she died

The UN is demanding an investigation into how the Israeli military
killed one of its Palestinian school teachers by blasting open the
front door of her Gaza home with explosives in the presence of three
of her children.

Wafer Shaker al Daghma, 34, a teacher at a local UN Relief and Works
Agency (UNRWA) elementary school, was killed last Wednesday as she
stood preparing to open the wooden door of her home to the troops.
According to UNRWA and relatives who found her body, the military used
an explosive device on the door which blew most of her head from her
body. They then confined the traumatised children – aged from two to
13 – for five hours while the body lay outside the door of the room
where they were held.

Although the soldiers finally left the house – in darkness because of
a blackout – at around 9pm, Mrs al Daghma's 13-year-old daughter
Samira was too terrified to go outside for help for another two hours
because of the continued presence of Israeli armoured vehicles outside
her home.

Tiles above a washbasin opposite the front door of the house were
still heavily spattered with dried blood yesterday. There was a pile
of splintered wooden planks from the destroyed door on the floor where
Mrs al Daghma's body, which soldiers apparently covered with a rug,
had lain as the military incursion continued.

Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, said that the Israeli forces were
using the house as a post to monitor "alleged militants". "The
children heard many gun shots but do not know where they came from,"
he said. He said UNRWA had asked Israel in writing for "an impartial
investigation, for accountability and allowing the facts to speak for
themselves," adding: "We again condemn the killing of innocent civilians."

Mrs al Daghma's widower, Majdi, 34, who was out of the house at the
time, said his daughter had told him that her mother, knowing that
troops were on a search and arrest operation in the vicinity, had put
on a headscarf, told the children to go into a bedroom and said that
she would open the door when the troops arrived.

An Israeli tank had parked by the outer, open, metal door and the
inner, wooden front door was then blasted open.

"Samira heard a very loud explosion and there was a lot of smoke. She
looked for her mother but couldn't see her," he said.

Samira al Daghma said yesterday that after entering the house the
soldiers had kept her, her sister Roba, four, and brother Qusay, two,
in the room. "They did not let us out. There was one soldier at the
door of the room. I asked him: 'Where is my mother?' He was speaking
in Hebrew and I didn't understand him."

She said that when the soldiers finally left, she crawled with her
siblings to a room on the eastern side of the house. "There were still
tanks outside our house and if I had gone out they would have seen me.
I tried to call my father on my mother's Jawwal [cellphone] but there
was no line. I lifted the carpet and saw a bit of my mother's clothes.
She was not moving. I did not see her head."

Mr al Daghma said the family were Fatah rather than Hamas supporters.
The funeral was arranged by Fatah and there were Arafat portraits in
the house yesterday. The Israeli military said it was looking into the
incident.

The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday promised "strong
action" to stop Gaza militants if they continued their attacks after a
48-year-old Israeli father-of-four was killed by a Hamas-claimed
mortar on Friday. Oxfam urged Israel to avert a health crisis as
Gaza's power station shut down, saying it had run out of fuel.

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