KHAN
YUNIS, Gaza Strip, July 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) -
Thousands of outraged Palestinians here Saturday, July 6, buried three
people, including a mother and her two-year-old daughter who were
killed by Israeli gunfire on a coastal road in the Gaza Strip.
Around
3,000 mourners carried the shrouded bodies of 40-year-old Randa
Al-Hindi and her daughter Nour to the cemetery in the southern Gaza
Strip town of Khan Yunis, calling on Palestinian resistance groups to
take revenge for their deaths.
Marchers
also unleashed a torrent of gunfire into the air, while denouncing
hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an Agence France-Presse
(AFP) photographer said.
Hindi,
who is survived by 12 children, and her youngest daughter Nour were
killed before dawn Saturday as they returned home from a wedding party
near Gaza City.
Witnesses
said that Israeli occupation tanks at the junction with the Jewish
settlement at Netzarim, on a road along the Mediterranean coast,
opened fire with their machine guns, riddling the car with bullets,
although there had been no Palestinian gunmen in the area when the
incident occurred.
Medical
sources told AFP that the girl was struck in the head by a large
caliber bullet, while the mother was hit by several gunshots.
However,
an Israeli military spokesman denied there had been any shooting in
the area near the Netzarim junction.
Earlier,
Palestinian medical and security sources told AFP a Palestinian man
was killed in his home when Israeli troops opened fire on houses in
Khan Yunis.
Khamees
Shurab, 45, died after being hit in the head, chest and leg when
Israeli troops fired heavy machine-guns on a group of houses in the
eastern outskirts of Khan Yunis, they said.
The
firing came from an area close to the Jewish settlement of Morag, they
said, adding that a number of other houses in the area were lightly
damaged.
The
army said it was not aware of any such incidents in the area.
He
was buried in a separate funeral in Khan Yunes, which is in the
southern end of the Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt.
Later,
Palestinian officials condemned the killing of the mother and child as
a crime.
Israeli
chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP, “We hold the Israeli
government responsible for this criminal act”, Erakat told AFP.
Nabil
Abu Rudeina, adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, also
called for the trial of “the authors of this new Israeli crime.”
In
a statement, the Palestinian leadership denounced Israel’s
reoccupation of seven of the eight main cities in West Bank since June
19.
“What
happens in our territories, our towns and our villages is the
equivalent of state terrorism,” the leadership said.
It
demanded the diplomatic quartet of the European Union, Russia, United
Nations and the United States “confront this Israeli terrorist
aggression.”.
