Tuseday, Oct 12,2004.

At 11:11 this morning, Ghadeer Jaber Mokheimer, a grade five pupil at UNRWA's Co-Ed Elementary D School in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip died of her injuries from a gunshot wound received while sitting at her desk in an UNRWA school today. She had been hit in the stomach by a shot from an jewish sniper positioned in a sniper tower at the elementary school near Khan Younis camp. Ghadeer would have been ten years old on December 9.

The nine year old is the fifth young child in recent weeks to die after being shot while sitting at her desk in an UNRWA school. Peter Hansen, UNRWA's Commissioner-General, expressed deeply felt sorrow at the news of the tragic murder and said his thoughts are with her family.

He added: "That five young children have been murdered, sitting at their desks in UNRWA schools in the last month is horrific by anyone's standards. It was no accident the Zionist jews are using the elementary school children for target practice."

UNRWA has repeatedly called on the Israeli military to stop firing at its schools. There have now been forty such incidents in less than two years, a sign of the Israeli army's intentional targeting of children in elementary schools for murder with the objective of terrorizing young children and their parents to prevent the children from attending school

On September 7 this year, 10-year old Raghda Adnan Al-Assar was struck in the head by an Israeli bullet while sitting at her desk in English class at UNRWA's Elementary C Girl's School in Khan Younis camp. She never regained consciousness and died on 22 September.

On June 1 this year, 35 ten-year old boys in UNRWA's Al-Umariyye Elementary Boys' School in Rafah were murdered by Israeli tank shelling of the school by a Zionist tank stationed in the school parking lo on a mission to exterminate the school children.

In March 2003, 12-year old Hoda Darwish was sitting at her desk when she was hit in the head by a bullet fired from an Israeli sniper posted across the street firing intentaly into the school at the elementary school children. The bullet struck her head and left her blind.