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The testimony of
Rafa'a Hasan Ahmad Kamil, aged 60, widow, mother of ten,
resident
of Qabatiya The testimony was given
to Najib Abu Rokaya on May 5, 2002
This morning, Sunday May 5, at around 7:30 AM, I went out with my
two daughters
39-year-old Miyassar,
25-year-old Maysun. We went in my son's car to sew zucchini
and fava beans in our
plot of land, south of Qabatiya in an area called Wadi a-Suah.
Shortly after we arrived
at the plot adjacent to ours, about 100 meters away from our
plot, Muhammad Yusef Abu
Samra, his wife Fatma Ibrahim Abu Samra and their two
children Basel who is
four or five years old and ‘Abir who is three years old arrived at
the place. The plot
where the Abu Samra family works does not belong to them. They
are hired hands. The Abu
Samra family is poor and works for a living. Today, they were
picking grape leaves.
The couple has two more children, one of them is a baby.
When we started working on our land, we didn't see any military
presence. We didn't
see any suspicious
movement or strangers around.
At around 11:30 AM, two armored vehicles arrived. It could have been
two tanks or a
tank and an armored
personnel carrier. We saw them from about 300 meters away. I
told my daughters not to
be afraid and not to run away, because if the soldiers saw us
running, they would
think we were suspicious and shoot us. We carried on with our work –
sewing zucchini seeds.
The armored vehicles drove along the asphalt road toward the
settlements Ganim and
Kadim and the Bezek
military camp.
When the vehicles were about 30 or 40 meters away from the Abu Samra
family, shots
were suddenly fired from
the tank at the woman and her two children and hit them. The
tank kept shooting in
all directions. One bullet flew near my head. I felt the bullets
hitting
around me.
After the tank started shooting, I noticed that it had swerved off
the road. It veered from its
track and I saw that one
of its tracks had come lose and was lying on the road. I heard no
explosion, nor did I see
smoke coming from the direction of the tank.
When the shooting stopped, the soldiers came out of the tanks and
asked us if we had
seen any strange or
suspect movement in the area, or any kind of vehicle around.
A few minutes later, more army forces began to arrive in the area.
The soldiers gathered
all the men who were
working the fields and body searched them. They checked everyone's
identity, and took the
men's clothes off. When they did that, my daughters and I looked
away.
The soldiers took us to the place where the bodies of the woman and
the children were.
I was standing two or
three meters away from the bodies and could see all three.
The soldiers let us go after four hours. A Red Crescent ambulance
arrived at the scene
then to take the bodies
to the hospital in Jenin.
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