Mo’tasem Mohamed Ahmed Al Najjar

Location Khan Younis

Five-year-old Mo’tasem from Khuzaah in Khan Younis was clever and very enthusiastic about going to school. “I bought him clothes for Eid and for school. He was a mischievous boy, and that was a signal of his intelligence,” his mother said. He loved playing with sand. “He never got scared even during the war,” his mother added.

On 24 July 2014, the family was with more than eighty people in their neighbor’s basement, which was then hit with a missile from an Israeli drone. Everyone started to evacuate. “I called my sons, but I could not find Mo’tasem. I wanted to go back to the basement to find him, but people stopped me, saying it was too dangerous,” his mother said.

“Israeli forces were in the streets wearing civilian clothes, killing and arresting people. The injured were evacuated from the basement, and the killed were left behind. I was told that Mo’tasem was killed in addition to two others, and that forty people were injured. Only after nine days could we recover his decomposed body and bury it,” his mother added.