Sharif al-Hajin, wounded in the leg, aged 21

On Wednesday [28 August], my family and I picked figs and grapes on our land, which lies north of the Netzarim settlement. Also north of the settlement is an area designated a security area of the settlement. Our plot is only some 300 meters from that security area.

I generally sell figs and grapes during the day. On Wednesday, I went home after work. I got home about 5:00 P.M. My cousin Muhammad Samir al-Hajin and another relative, Heysham al-Hajin, came to visit. In the evening, we sat outside with my brothers Ashraf, Nihad, and Salah. My mother, father, my four-year-old brother Sa'id, and my other little siblings were in the house.

Around 9:30 P.M., we heard tanks moving about in the area. My father and little brothers were getting ready to go to sleep outdoors on the eastern side of the house. Some of them had already fallen asleep. My brothers told me that the tanks were moving in the direction of Givat a-Taba. They stopped there, as they usually did, to control the area. The hill is about 300 meters southeast of our property. Then I saw two tanks get to the hill and stop. We didn't want to stay in a place that was facing two tanks, so we descended to a lower section of the property. We sat down in a circle under a tree; we wanted to talk before going to sleep. My back was facing south, in the direction of the tanks.

We were still sitting there talking at 10:45 P.M. Suddenly, I was thrown into the air and fell to the ground. I heard a very powerful explosion. A dense cloud of dust and smoke covered the area where we were, and I couldn't see anything around me. I heard the voices of my brothers and others in my family, and I realized that they had been injured. I crawled about six meters very slowly. I saw my mother coming toward us. She was screaming. Less than thirty seconds after that, the tanks fired two shells. Then I heard intense gunfire. I didn't hear my mother screaming any more. I realized that she was dead. The firing lasted about two minutes.

I crawled another three or four meters, until I saw my father near the house. He told me that he was trying to get an ambulance. He asked how I was, and I replied that I had been wounded in the legs. He was near our car, a Fiat 127. He told me to get away from the area. I continued to crawl until I got to the main road. I crawled about 700 meters west. It took me about thirty minutes, during which the tanks shelled the area.

I stopped a taxi that was coming from the north, from Gaza. I told the driver that I had been wounded in the legs and described what happened. He put me in the taxi, turned around, and drove toward Gaza. When we got to the Khalil al-Wazir mosque, he stopped at a place where security personnel were gathered. I told them what had happened and got out of the taxi. Seconds later, two Red Crescent ambulances arrived. The ambulance staff wanted to treat me, but I refused and asked them to go to the site of the incident. The ambulances drove south toward the site. A civilian took me by car to a-Shipa Hospital, where I was treated. A little more than an hour later, the two ambulances arrived at the hospital with my injured brothers and other relatives. I didn't know what had happened to them, or if any of them had been killed.

When people came to visit me at the hospital, I learned that relatives of mine had been killed.

Sharif 'Uthman Mahmoud al-Hajin, age 21, single, student, resident of Bir a-N'ama,Jabalya. The testimony was given to Nabil Mekherez at the home of the mourners in Jabalya on 30 August 2002