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'It Seems Nothing Is Moving the World to Stop Israel’s Terrorism': Palestinian Poet Shares Photos of 9-Year-Old Girl Killed
According to a report Thursday from the Gaza Education Ministry, Ritaj Rihan was sitting at her desk at Abu Ubaida bin al-Jarrah School in Beit Lahiya when she was shot in front of her classmates, who were left in "psychological shock."
"We suddenly heard the students screaming, so we rushed to the tent to find Ritaj lying face down, blood gushing from her mouth," her teacher told the Xinhua news agency.
Photos of Rihan's dead body were shared on social media by Mosab Abu Toha, a local poet. He said that the makeshift tent where Rihan studied was built on top of the ruins of his former high school, which was destroyed during Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.
"Even when kids try to learn, after over two years of nonstop running from the bombs, Israel shoots them," he wrote in a post which accompanied a photo of Rihan wrapped in a body bag at a hospital in Gaza City.
"It’s painful for me to post this," Toha said. "It seems nothing is moving the world to stop Israel’s terrorism."
Photos and videos showed Rihan's bloodied body being rushed through the streets on foot. The school's principal told the Quds News Network that there was no medical transport in the area, so the only way to carry her to the hospital was via horse-drawn carriage.
Another photograph shows the bullet that reportedly killed the child.
"We were stunned," another of the educators said. "A 9-year-old child. By what right was she martyred? For what sin was she shot while she came just to learn to write?"
The Israeli military has not commented on the shooting.
The killing came on the six-month anniversary of the "ceasefire" in Gaza that has been in place since October. At least 738 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,000 injured since then, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. In January, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that more than 100 children had been killed since the ceasefire began.
Authorities in Gaza have accused Israel of violating the ceasefire thousands of times. And according to a report out Thursday from Oxfam and other humanitarian groups, "Palestinians are continuing to suffer extreme deprivation, hunger, injury, and death due to the Israeli government’s continued attacks, movement restrictions, and aid obstructions."
Israel still occupies more than half of the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 2 million residents crammed into about a third of the strip's territory. With most buildings either damaged or totally destroyed, the vast majority of the population lives in makeshift tents and is left with little protection from storms and ongoing attacks by Israel.
According to Human Rights Watch, 97% of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks. But educators, most of whom are volunteers, have still tried to use the few resources they have to provide schools for Gaza's more than a million children.
The school attended by Rihan was just two kilometers away from the yellow line dividing Israel's official occupation zone from the rest of Gaza.
Rihan's mother said she woke up excited to go to school that day and was looking forward to wearing her favorite dress to her uncle's wedding the next week.
"It wasn't meant to be," her mother said, while holding her daughter's bloodstained school notebook. "She wore her shroud instead."
The reported attack also comes just a day after Israel launched an unprecedented assault on civilian areas across Lebanon, which has threatened to destroy the ceasefire reached earlier this week between the US and Iran.
The Gaza Ministry of Health described the attack that killed Rihan as a “brutal and horrific crime, adding to Israel’s long, dark record of atrocities."
“It was not an isolated incident," the ministry said, "but a direct extension of a systematic policy targeting the Palestinian people."
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