Palestinian national team footballer killed in Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis
A Palestinian national football team player has been killed in an Israeli airstrike on his house in the southern Gaza Strip.
Mohammed Barakat, who played as forward for Al Ahli Gaza football club, was killed in his house in Khan Yunis on Monday, al-Jazeera reported.
“What a huge loss on and off the pitch for Palestinian football,” Palestinian footballer Khalid Abu-Habel told the news website.
“I have played against him. He was quick and clever. A top, top goal-scorer. Off the pitch, he was kind and friendly. A beloved friend of all.”
He said, “Sports in Gaza have lost a lot during the war. How many should we lose more? The sports community in Gaza is simply collapsing.”
Barakat is one in more than 1,000 Palestinian athletes who have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip since early October, according to the Palestinian Football Association.
It said in a statement that the regime has been “targeting sports facilities and the headquarters of the Palestinian sports and clubs.”
The association said letters have been sent to the International Olympic Committee and all international, continental and regional federations, including FIFA, "calling for an urgent international investigation into the crimes of the occupation against sports and athletes in Palestine."
According to earlier reports, Israeli airstrikes have led to the destruction of at least nine sports facilities in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
More than five months into the regime's war in the besieged territory, almost 70% of Gaza's homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The total number of people killed in the war has also surpassed 31,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
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