PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT
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Israeli Army Shoots Foreigners and Journalists in Gaza/West Bank Area
-The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists
A freelance British journalist, James Miller is the latest Westerner killed by the Israeli Army, when he was shot dead yesterday ( 03 May 2003) by Israeli soldiers in the southern city of Rafah in Gaza. In this latest tragic incident, Miller was shot in the neck and died before a helicopter sent to evacuate him arrived. Witnesses said Miller was filming a documentary on the Israeli army's house demolitions in Rafah when an Israeli tank opened fire. One witness said Miller and two colleagues were simultaneously filming and waving a white flag as they walked toward the tank.
Miller was the third foreigner to be injured or killed in Rafah in recent weeks..
Other westerners and journalists who had been targets of the Israeli Army include:
American Rachel Corrie, 23, died March 16 in Rafah when an Israeli bulldozer she was trying to block ran her over.
On April 11, British peace activist Tom Hurndall, 21, was shot in the head at the Rafah refugee camp. He is in a coma. Witnesses said Hurndall was shot by an Israeli soldier in a military watchtower as Hurndall stooped to pick up a Palestinian girl and carry her to safety.
Tom Hurndall fatally shot In the West Bank, peace activist Brian Avery, 24, of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was shot in the face in the town of Jenin on April 5 by Israeli soldiers. Avery, a 24-year-old American citizen from Albuquerque, New Mexico, experienced serious wounds to his face after Israeli troops opened fire at him with heavy machine gun fire from an armoured personnel carrier.
Palestinian medics attend to Brian Avery of the United States who was wounded in the face from an Israeli armoured vehicle while in the streets of the West Bank city of Jenin on April 5, 2003.
Avery and Karlsson are members of the Palestinian-backed group International Solidarity Movement. Members of the group often insert themselves between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers to try to stop Israeli operations. "We had our hands up, and we were wearing vests that clearly identified us as international workers when they began firing," Karlsson said. "Brian was shot in the face, and it looks like he was hit by a heavy caliber bullet because of the extent of the wound."
Associated Press Television News cameraman Nazeh Darwazeh was killed on April 19 in the West Bank city of Nablus while videotaping clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinians. Witnesses said Darwazeh was shot by an Israeli soldier taking cover behind an armoured vehicle in an alley. 
Iain Hook, a British senior manager of UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, was killed Friday in the compound in the Jenin refugee camp - the first senior U.N. official to die in over two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. In its statement about the Jenin clash, the Israeli army said two soldiers fired at Hook inside the U.N. compound because he had "an object that appeared to be a gun."
Paul McCann, a U.N. spokesman, said the army's claim that gunmen were inside the compound was wrong. "Our preliminary inquiry does not agree with the statement that firing could have come from the UNRWA compound. It in fact is quite clear from our inquiry so far that this report of firing from the compound is totally incredible," he said. Hook, he added, had been on his cell phone in the moments before he was shot, trying to arrange for the evacuation of U.N. personnel from the compound.
U.N. car can be seen parked behind damaged barrier of U.N. compound in which Iain Hook was shot and killed during clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli army (AP)
Palestinian hospital staff show the body of Briton Iain Hook, Director of the United Nations reconstruction project of Jenin refugee camp, at a hospital in the West Bank town of Jenin Friday Nov, 22, 2002. The U.N. official was hit by Israeli fire when the soldiers were shooting trying to disperse stone-throwing Palestinian youths. Israeli military delayed the arrival of paramedics by an hour and by the time the Israeli ambulance arrived, Hook no longer had a pulse, the officials said.
On the same day ( 22 November 2002 ) International Solidarity Movement activist and Irish national Caoimhe Butterly was shot in the leg in Jenin. It was Palestinians who took her to the hospital. German doctor Harald Fischer and Italian cameraman Rafaeli Ciriello were both also killed by Israeli gunfire during the Intifada.
Harald Fischer, 67, a retired chiropractor from Gummersbach in North Rhine-Westphalia, has the tragic distinction of being the first European citizen - and first Christian - to die in seven weeks of bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza. Fischer appears to have taken a direct hit from an Israeli missile. The attack was part of an Israeli assault on five West Bank towns overnight, in what Israel's prime minister, Ehud Barak, has called retaliatory acts for gunfire from Yasser Arafat's Fatah tanzim militias
Raffaele Ciriello, 42, a veteran of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Kosovo working for Corriere della Sera, was inching his way around the lanes off Manara Square, the scene of heavy gunbattles between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants for much of the day. Italian journalists in the area said a tank opened fire when he pulled out a small video camera. He was taken to hospital almost immediately but died soon afterwards.
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