The Israeli military has killed two young female human rights lawyers in its recent air raids on the Gaza Strip, drawing a wave of condemnations.
Both victims, who were working for the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), lost their lives this week as Israel pushes ahead with the genocidal war against the besieged Gaza, now in its fifth month.
Dana Yaghi, a lawyer at the Women’s Rights Unit of the PCHR, was killed along with 40 others, including 10 children, in an Israeli aerial assault on her family’s house in the central Gaza governorate of Deir al-Balah on February 22.
It came two days after Nour Abu al-Nour lost her life along with seven family members, including her two-year-old daughter, in Israel’s bombing of Gaza’s southern Rafah governorate.
The PCHR expressed shock at the killings, saying, “Our hearts are saddened by the loss of Dana and Nour, and our thoughts and prayers are with their loved ones.”
Additionally, the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq extended its deepest condolences and sympathy to the PCHR on the killings.
The victims’ “legacies will live on through our work as we continue our struggle for an end to this ongoing genocide, justice, accountability and ultimately freedom for the Palestinian people,” it said in a statement released on its X account.
Meanwhile, UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Margaret Satterthwaite, described the murders as “horrible news”.
Norway’s embassy in Palestine also mourned the killings, saying the victims were “brilliant young lawyers” who were defending women’s rights.
Israel waged its brutal war on the Gaza Strip on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The occupying regime has so far killed at least 29,606 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 69,737 others.
