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Briton Killed By Israeli Army in Jenin Camp

Hospital staff show the body of Briton Ian Hook 

GAZA CITY, November 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the British UN worker shot dead Friday, November 22, in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin was killed by Israeli gunfire, calling the incident a "new Israeli crime." And an Irish human rights activist shot and wounded Friday in the West Bank said she was trying to rescue Palestinian children who were being fired on by Israeli troops.

Caoimhe Butterly, 23, said in a telephone interview with Irish RTE radio that she had gone to a "flashpoint" in Jenin where children were being shot at by (Israeli) soldiers, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

One child was killed, she said, adding: "Three others had just been shot. I tried to negotiate with the soldiers to get them to stop shooting while standing in front of the kids.

"At that stage another tank drove up and lifted up the hatch. I saw the soldier take aim and he opened fire on the crowd of kids.

"Most of them managed to get away. There were about three still in the road. I tried physically to pick them up to bring them into an alleyway. They were small ones. I got shot in the process," she said.

An Irish Foreign Ministry spokesman told AFP: "We were initially told she (Butterly) had been shot in the leg. The Embassy has been in touch with her and she has told them her injuries are not that serious."

Butterly, from Cork in the south of Ireland, has been active in the Palestinian (occupied) territories for some time with other international peace campaigners.

Doctor Mustafa Barghuti, a leading Palestinian rights activist, said Butterly has been living in the camp for the past six months "to provide protection to Palestinians in Jenin against the Israeli army."

Four people were shot dead, including the British U.N. worker and a Palestinian child, as Israeli troops Friday swept into West Bank towns and southern Gaza, following a Jerusalem bombing that killed 11 people.

The Briton was identified as engineer Ian Hook, 53.
The Israeli tanks opened fire at Palestinian children and activists trying to save them 

A spokesman for the U.N. Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA) said he had recently been seconded to UNWRA by the British development agency to coordinate reconstruction of the Jenin camp after a two-month army occupation last spring.

He "was killed by the Israeli army, which shows the little consideration the army has for life," Erakat said.

The "murder of a British employee, chief of the reconstruction project in the Jenin refugee camp, constitutes a new Israeli crime," Erakat added.

The head of Jenin hospital, Doctor Mohammed Abu Ghali, said Hook was "hit by two Israeli M-16 bullets in the abdomen."

He said Israel had been barring all ambulances from freely circulating inside the camp.

"They could not reach him on time, and he arrived dead at the hospital," Ghali said. 

UNWRA spokesman Sami Mshasha said earlier it was "safe to say he was killed by gunfire, although we cannot confirm where the fire came from at this juncture."

The (Israeli) army was not immediately available for comments on the circumstances of Hook's death.

In another development, two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinians were wounded in separate incidents Friday in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, military and medical sources said.

The two soldiers were lightly wounded when their armored vehicle was rocked by an explosion, military sources said, without elaborating.

The blast occurred near the flashpoint border area with Egypt.

In the neighboring Rafah refugee camp, two Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire, Palestinian medical sources said.

The army demolished seven houses in the camp, five of which were uninhabited, Palestinian witnesses said.

 

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