A 21-year-old Briton was pronounced clinically dead today after being hit in the head and critically wounded by Israeli sniper fire in Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.
Mr Thomas Hurndall was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group of pro-Palestinian activists who engage in non-violent action to protect civilians in the West Bank and Gaza.
A colleague who witnessed the incident said he was trying to pull two children out of danger with a group of other foreign activists and Palestinian civilians when shots were fired from an army watchtower some 100 metres away.
Doctors at Rafah hospital said the young man was pronounced clinically dead shortly after he was admitted. He was later airlifted to a hospital in the southern Israeli town of Beersheva, members of the ISM team in Rafah said.
Mr Hurndall arrived in Rafah on Sunday after spending several days training in the West Bank. Before arriving in the Palestinian territories, he had been in Iraq acting as a human shield, after which he spent some time in Jordan.
The army would not comment on the incident.
Irish ISM volunteer Mr Salah Afifi, who was deported from Palestine last August, said: "This is clearly part of a campaign of targetting internationals under the cover of the war in Iraq. These internationals are the only protection the Palestinian people have. The increased Israeli attempts to intimidate the witnesses to their occupation are a sinister development."It was the third such incident in the past four weeks in which a foreign peace activist was injured or killed during Israeli military operations.
Last Saturday, two foreign ISM activists were wounded by Israeli gunfire, one of them seriously, during clashes between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
A 24-year-old American, Mr Barry Avery, suffered a serious gunshot wound to the face, while a Danish man, Mr Lasse Schmidt (35), was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, medics said.
And last month, Mr Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old US national also volunteering with the ISM, was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian house.
The Israeli army said it was an "accident" and has yet to reveal the result of its investigation into her death.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be holding a vigil outside the Israeli embassy, Ballsbridge, at 7.00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 16th, in memory of Ms Rachel Corrie and the 21 Palestinians killed in similar incidents over the last year.