Majdi Ehab Ghabayen

September 24, 2023: Majdi Ehab Ghabayen, 18, died from serious wounds he suffered on September 13, in an explosion in Gaza City on September 13, 2023, bringing the number of deaths to six.

After the explosion, the Palestinian Health Ministry has confirmed that five Palestinians were killed, and twenty-six others, including children, were injured.

The Health Ministry stated that Majdi was among three Palestinians who suffered life-threatening wounds and added that five other Palestinians suffered moderate or moderate-to-serious injuries.

The Palestinians killed in the incident were identified as Mohammad Omar Qaddoum, Ra’ed Rawhi Yahia Ramadan, 17, Abdul-Nasser Rami Nofal, 18, Ali Jom’a Ayyad, and Baraa Wael Al-Zard, 18, who is reported to be the son of a Hamas leader.

Sources described a “suspicious object” as the cause of the explosion, while another source quoted eyewitnesses who stated, that a members of an Israeli engineering unit arrived at the site, adding that occupation soldiers opened fire at those in the vicinity, and prevented them from leaving the place, until the device exploded.

The exact cause of the explosion was not confirmed at the time of writing this report; however, it was described as an “accidental explosion”.

An eyewitness account offers some further details about the nature of the device.

What happened with us near the fence, there was a suspicious object, a camera-like object, its width was about 10 centimeters (3.9 inches), with a half meter length (19.7 inches). The object was completely black. We were ambushed, one of the youths decided to check it with a stick, but it immediately exploded.

Video By Quds News

On that day, hundreds of Palestinians gathered along the border fence between Gaza and Israel, to commemorate the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces from the Gaza Strip on September 12, 2005.

Soldiers fired live rounds and tear gas canisters at demonstrators, injuring five with live rounds, they were transported to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

One man was shot in the head with a tear gas canister, while a number of others sustained inhalation injuries from exposure to tear gas.

Sources added that Palestinian youths detonated small crude explosive devices near the border fence.

Majdi was from the Al-Atatra area in Beita Lahia in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Source: IMEMC

Dia’ Kamal Dahdouh

December 2, 2021: Dia’ Kamal Dahdouh, 26, died from serious wounds he suffered, a year earlier, in an explosion near his home in Gaza city.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, said Dia’ was one of its members, and added that he suffered serious wounds, a year ago, in an “accidental explosion” in Tal Al-Hawa.

Many Palestinian fighters have been killed in accidental explosions, or during training, in addition to the hundreds who were assassinated or killed by Israeli soldiers during the frequent invasions and bombings in the Gaza Strip.

Some have also been killed or seriously injured while dismantling explosives dropped by Israeli soldiers, in addition to unexploded ordnances that were fired by the Israeli army, or while manufacturing homemade shells.

It is worth mentioning that, on June 10, 2021, a Palestinian child, identified as Obeida Dahdouh, only nine years of age, was killed when an undetonated Israeli explosive that was dropped during the recent Israeli offensive on Gaza, exploded near him.

The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that the Israeli explosive went off near the child, causing serious wounds before the medics rushed him to the Shifa Medical Center where he succumbed to his wounds. His brother was also injured in the explosion.

During the eleven days of the Israeli offensive on Gaza in May of this year, the death toll reached 247, including sixty-six children and thirty-nine women, while 1416 Palestinians, including 277 women and 412 children have been wounded, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) has confirmed.

Dia’ was from Tal-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza city. Source: IMEMC