The caresses and the recent quarrels of eight-month-old Laila al-Ghandour are still present in her mother's memory, as if they had just happened.
But the tear gas that the Israeli army threw over the heads of the civilian demonstrators in the massacre that took place on Monday near the Gaza Strip border put an end to these caresses, strangled the child's lungs and caused her death.
The Ministry of Health has announced, early in the dawn of Tuesday, the death of the infant Ghandour, as a result of gas suffocation.
"The Israeli army deprived her of the first joy in her life," says the mother of the girl, Maryam al-Ghandour, to the Anatolia agency, wiping her tears.
The pregnant mother explains that she was not accompanied by her daughter in the marches. She stayed at home for a pain, and her 13-year-old brother Ammar took her without her knowledge and put her beside her mother, the grandmother of the girl. In peaceful demonstrations.
She added that the baby Laila "was a source of joy and pleasure in the house, and was smiling to all who see and deter."
The mother, "Maryam" "Israel is fully responsible for the death of her child Laila, suffocating by inhaling gas, and the internationally prohibited."
The grandmother, "Hayam Omar" (37 years), who was participating in the marches, says that the Israeli army intensified the fire and gas bombs, despite the presence of children in the march of return.
During the escalation of the al-Awda border camp, her son, Ammar, carried Laila in his arms for fear of her and began to run to his mother (the grandmother of the girl) to protect her from gas from Israeli bombs.
But she did not succeed, and the infant swallowed gas, as the grandmother, who had hugged Laila in her arms, tried to protect her from "Israeli brutality against the demonstrators."
When the grandmother returned to her home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, she changed the color of the blue color, she says. She rushed to the hospital, but the doctor told them that "the infant died of gas inhalation."
Omar demanded that the Israeli army be prosecuted for its crimes against peaceful protesters, especially children.
The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory for Human Rights (based in Geneva) said that Israeli gas is made up of "substances that cause large tremors and fainting, and may lead to chronic lung infections and chronic nerve convulsions."
On Monday, the Israeli army committed a massacre of peaceful protesters on the Gaza Strip border, killing 60 people and injuring more than 2,770 others, with live bullets, rubber bullets and tear gas canisters.
The protestors were protesting the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.
* Anatolia News Agency
