Nobody is safe in Gaza, nowhere. Almost 30,000 people have died in this war, among them approximately 12,000 children. With 1.5 million people, the city of Rafah is currently the largest refugee camp in the world. The continuous Israeli airstrikes are killing doctors, paramedics, journalists, university lecturers, human rights activists and lawyers, among others. Now, two colleagues from our partner organization, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), have been killed.
The 27-year-old lawyer Dana Yaghi died on 22 February, along with 43 of her relatives, mainly women and children, in an Israeli airstrike on her family home in Deir Al Balah, a town in the central Gaza Strip between Gaza City and Khan Yunis. Dana Yaghi was a member of the Woman Right's Unit of PCHR. Just two days earlier, on 20 February, the 30-year-old PCHR lawyer Nour Naser Abu Al-Nour was killed in an Israeli airstrike on her family home in the Al-Jeneina neighborhood in eastern Rafah. The shelling also killed her two-year-old daughter, her father, her mother and four other family members.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights was founded in Gaza City in 1995 by Palestinian lawyers and human rights activists to protect human rights, promote the rule of law and support democratic culture within Palestinian society. PCHR is a partner organization of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). Several PCHR lawyers have interned at ECCHR in recent years and are part of our larger alumni network. ECCHR, together with PCHR, filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Public Prosecutor General (GBA) in Germany to ensure that the circumstances of the death of the German-Palestinian Kilani family, who were killed by an Israeli rocket in Gaza City in July 2014, were criminally investigated.ECCHR mourns the loss of our PCHR colleagues, who died despite their protected status as civilians. Their work in addressing the gravest human rights violations will be missed.
