French grandmother files legal complaint over Gaza genocide
The grandmother of two children with French citizenship killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza has filed a legal complaint, accusing Israel of genocide and murder, her lawyer says, as reported by AFP news agency.
Jacqueline Rivault filed her complaint with the “crimes against humanity” hub of the Court of Paris, lawyer Arie Alimi said.
Rivault hopes the fact that her daughter’s children, aged six and nine, were French means the country’s judiciary will decide it has jurisdiction to designate a magistrate to investigate the allegations.
The complaint states that “two F16 missiles fired by the Israeli army” killed Janna, six, and Abderrahim Abudaher, nine, in northern Gaza on October 24, 2023.
They and their family had sought refuge in another home “between Faluja and Beit Lahia” after leaving their own two days earlier due to heavy bombardment, the 48-page document stated.
One missile entered “through the roof and the second directly into the room where the family was”, it said. Abderrahim was killed instantly, while his sister Janna died shortly after being taken to hospital.
The complaint argues the “genocide” allegation is based on the air strike being part of a larger Israeli project to “eliminate the Palestinian population and submit it to living conditions of a nature to entail the destruction of their group”.
UNICEF spokesperson calls for end to ‘brutal war against childhood’
The United Nations Children’s Fund spokesperson, James Elder, has pointed to the psychological trauma experienced by children in Gaza while on a visit to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in the central part of the Strip.
In a video posted on his Instagram account, Elder told the story of 11-year-old girl Jina, who was paralysed from the waist down following an air strike two days ago.
“Jina is still completely unaware of what happened to her. She is now in a state of deep despair and just wants to get out of here, but she cannot get medical evacuation,” he said. “Doctors assure me that there is currently no possibility of treating her paralysis.”
The latest UNICEF statistics indicate that 50,000 children have been killed or injured since the start of the war in Gaza.
“If we consider that every classroom has 25 children, this means that the equivalent of 2,000 classrooms of children have been affected by this disaster,” he said. “Therefore, this tragedy must end.”
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