BEIT HANUN (PIC)– A Palestinian woman returning from pilgrimage to Makkah was killed at a late hour on Sunday while four others were wounded when IOF troops stationed at the Beit Hanun (Erez) crossing fired at them.
Medical sources said that Hamdia Hamdan 40 was hit with a bullet in the head and died instantly when she along with other pilgrims were collecting their luggage near one of the gates at Beit Hanun crossing north of Gaza.
One of the surviving pilgrims said that IOF soldiers fired at them for a few minutes killing Hamdan and injuring others.
The pilgrims constituted the first batch of pilgrims to return to Gaza via the Beit Hanun crossing in coordination between the illegal government of Salam Fayyad in Ramallah and the IOA. Some 960 pilgrims from the Strip headed to Makkah Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage through this Fayyad-IOA coordination.
Meanwhile more than 2000 other pilgrims at the Egyptian city of Arish have threatened to go on hunger strike on Monday if they were not allowed back home via the Rafah crossing the same way they got out of the Strip en route to Makkah.
MP Khamis Al-Najjar who is among the stranded pilgrims in Arish told PIC over the telephone that the pilgrims refused to disembark from the buses that carried them from the Nuweibe port to Arish to stay in the shelters prepared for them by the Egyptian authorities.
The pilgrims are adamant on maintaining a sit-in until their problem is solved the lawmaker emphasized adding that they refuse any other option to their return to Gaza.
He pointed out that a seriously sick pilgrim was carried to an Egyptian hospital after his condition worsened warning that many similar cases might deteriorate particularly when most of them were old and/or suffering various illnesses.
Najjar mourned the death of Hamdan and questioned whether the Arab leaders wanted them to be delivered to a similar fate.
The MP called on Arab and Islamic leaders to intervene immediately to end the “tragedy” and to enable the pilgrims to return safely and in dignity to their homeland.
Egypt opted not to allow the return of those pilgrims via Rafah terminal citing Israeli refusal which many observes said was encouraged by the PA leadership in Ramallah in a bid to ascertain its authority and leverage and to demoralize the Hamas Movement that has been in full control of the Strip for more than six months now.
