August 07, 2022: Mohammad Yasser Nimr al-Nabahin, 13, was killed after the Israeli army fired missiles targeting homes in the Gaza Strip.
Mohammad was one of 17 Palestinian children confirmed killed during the Israeli military’s three-day military offensive on the Gaza Strip August 5 – 7.
An explosion on August 7 struck the Nabahin family home in Al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip around 7:05 p.m., according to documentation collected by DCIP. Three Palestinian children were killed in the explosion: 14-year-old Dalia, 12-year-old Mohammad, and nine-year-old Ahmad Yasser Nemer Nabaheen. The children’s father, Yasser, was also killed in the explosion, and a fourth sibling, Bilal, sustained moderate injuries.
Mohammad had big dreams of becoming a traveling merchant — to go outside of Gaza and bring back new exciting things to trade. He always talked about growing up so he could work and achieve his dreams. In the summers he would make kites and sell them to the kids in the neighborhood. “He had a kind, soft heart,” his older brother Bilal said.
Their father, Yasser, was a captain of Gaza’s nautical police. “He had an honorable career of heroism and fighting against the occupation,” Yasser’s son Bilal, 23, said.
At the front of his home, Yasser had a garden where he used to sit with his family under the trees, and would tend to the garden and water the plants with care.
The home is located east of Al-Bureij Refugee Camp, close to the borders.
On Sunday, Yasser decided to go sit in his garden, and received one relative visiting from the house next door. After the guest left, Yasser started watering the trees with his sons. The airstrike targeted them all.
Yasser was a husband and a father of 8. Half of the children, two girls and two boys, survived because they were inside the house, but one of them was injured.
Also on August 7, an Israeli drone-fired missile struck Al-Fallujah cemetery, west of Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, around 7 p.m., according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International. The Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinian children: Jameel Najmuddin Jameel Najim, 3; Hamed Heidar Hamed Najim, 16; Jameel Ihab Jameel Najim, 13; Mohammad Salah Hamed Najim, 16; and Nathmi Fayez Abdulhadi Abu Karsh, 15.
The Israeli military launched airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on August 5, killing at least 44 people and injuring at least 350, according to Al Jazeera. A ceasefire went into effect at 11:30 p.m. on August 7. The Israeli military offensive came just days after Israeli forces arrested a senior Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank city of Jenin and killed 16-year-old Dirar Riyad Lufti Al-Haj Saleh, also in Jenin, who was protesting the Israeli military’s incursion into Jenin refugee camp.
International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks and requires all parties to an armed conflict to distinguish between military targets, civilians, and civilian objects. Israel as the occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the Gaza Strip, is required to protect the Palestinian civilian population from violence.
Israeli authorities have imposed a closure policy against the Gaza Strip since 2007 by strictly controlling and limiting the entry and exit of individuals; maintaining harsh restrictions on imports including food, construction materials, fuel, and other essential items; as well as prohibiting exports. Israel continues to maintain complete control over the Gaza Strip’s borders, airspace, and territorial waters.
Since 2008, Israel has waged four wars on the Palestinian territory, killing nearly 4,000 people – one-quarter of them children.
According to data compiled by Defense for Children International, at least 2,200 children have been killed by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers across the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2000 – the beginning of the second intifada.
Mohammad was from Al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Source: Al Jazeera, Mondoweiss