(Previous Incident Code: ISPT134 )

On August 5th 2022 an alleged Israeli artillery shell fell on a house in Al-Fokhari, in eastern Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip which was reported to have killed Doniana Al-Amour, aged 22 to 23, and injured up to nine of her brothers. The house belonged to her father, Adnan Atiyah Al-Amour.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported that Doniana died after sustaining shrapnel wounds all over her body.

Doniana Al-Amour was an artist and local sources posted photos of her artwork on social media. She had uploaded a group of paintings onto her social media and commented “For my part, I don’t do anything amazing, but I am trying in the midst of this isolation to make life bearable.”

According to @LastStory, the writer Mahmoud Joudeh published a set of Al-Amour’s paintings, and said “this is a group of the paintings of the artist Doniana Al-Amour…. A girl from Gaza who was studying at the College of Fine Arts and loves colours. Away through colours, paper and the imagination of language… All possibilities and ideas were on the table to produce a new painting, but the tank that was standing nearby had a different opinion… A shell killed the girl, turning her into a picture hanging in the chest of memory… a new painting that was not taken into account. The occupation used: a solider, a tank and a bomb.”

The writer Joudeh added: “The death of a girl in the city means that a poem will not be written, a painting will not be painted, an orphaned love, a hug that has been postponed, and the sadness of the present tense does not stop!”

She was reported to have been a student at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza. Al Aqsa University posted a statement on the death of Doniana, stating that she was “martyred today in the brutal Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.”

Shams News wrote that Doniana and her siblings had just finished lunch and were preparing tea when the strike occurred. Doniana and nine of her brothers were taken to the European Hospital for treatment, where she later died.

According to Mondoweiss, Doniana is one of 11 family members and at the time of the strike she was with her brothers crossing a street near the border area outside of Khan Younis when an Israeli airstrike hit a nearby PIJ site. Six of her brothers were injured in the same strike.

Doniana’s father Abu Muhammad told Shams News “The Israeli artillery targeted the house with two shells, the first penetrated Doniana’s window and the second fell to the side of the house. Doniana dreamed of completing the study of law at Al-Aqsa University, but the bad economic conditions prompted us to stop her from studying her last semester at the university.”

Local sources also reported that this attack also targeted farmlands. All sources attributed the airstrike/shelling to Israeli forces.