30 Israeli Bullets Killed 8-Year-Old Palestinian Girl
Associated Press

YAMOUN, West Bank, 19 March 2006 — Eight-year-old Akbar Zayed was on her way to have stitches removed from her chin when a barrage of Israeli Army bullets killed her on the spot, her family said yesterday.
The army opened an investigation into Akbar’s killing, but the failed arrest raid left behind demolished homes, damaged cars and a family devastated by the death of a little girl.
The arrest raid in the West Bank village of Yamoun began like many others. Soldiers stormed the village of Yamoun late Friday, hunting down fugitives the army believed were holed up in a house. Troops cordoned off an area around the house, calling on the fugitives to surrender, the army said.
Suddenly, a taxi drove into the area, the army said. An initial military inquiry found that the troops called on the driver to stop, and when he failed to do so, soldiers fired at the car’s wheels.

But Kamal Zayed, the girl’s uncle who was driving the car, said three men ran toward the car and before he could turn off the engine they fired on him.
“I saw them behind the fence. There were more than 30 soldiers. The first bullet hit my niece. She got a bullet in the head from the very beginning,” Kamal recalled from his hospital bed, where he was being treated yesterday for gunshot wounds in his arm and leg. When the gunfire erupted, Kamal had just arrived at the clinic where his niece was to have her stitches removed.
“I started to yell ... opened the door and started taking her out of the car to get her into the clinic. They (the soldiers) yelled at me to put her on the ground, started shooting in the air. I don’t know what they shot at.” Kamal said.
Later, Kamal said he was pulled out of the ambulance by soldiers and interrogated for more than two hours before being allowed to receive medical treatment

Hundreds of people yesterday attended the young girl’s funeral. Stopping frequently to calm himself down, Akbal Zayed’s father, Abder Zayed, said he had asked his brother to take the girl to the clinic because he did not want to be present when the doctors removed her stitches.
“They (the soldiers) have no idea how much I love her,” the father said, chain-smoking and wiping away his tears. “How can I enter the house and never see her again?”
Akbar was killed early on in the military operation. Later, the army partially destroyed a house, rounding up the family members and detaining them at an Israeli military base for several hours, residents said. The fugitives fled. “Until now, I don’t know why they did it to us, why they shot at us. It was clear that I was in the car just with a small girl,” the uncle, Kamal, said.