A/HRC/7/76 page 10 Fatah party.14 International humanitarian law requires that humanitarian relief personnel and objects used for humanitarian relief operations be protected. Passage of humanitarian relief must be allowed and facilitated by the parties to the conflict. B. Violence against the civilian population Background 31. Israeli security forces continued military incursions into Gaza and the West Bank throughout 2007. According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 392 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (91 in the West Bank, 301 in Gaza); in addition, 1,180 Palestinians were injured in the West Bank and 661 in the Gaza Strip. During the same period, 13 Israelis were killed and 322 injured. The Office also reported that, from mid-June to 25 December, 632 Qassam rockets and 921 mortar shells were fired from Gaza.15 32. In January 2008, the situation escalated: as at midday 22 January, as hostilities continued, around 70 Palestinians and 1 Ecuadorian kibbutz worker had been reported killed, 23 on 15 and 16 January alone. On 15 and 16 January, in Gaza, five Palestinian civilians were killed during operations of the Israeli army and another three died when an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at their car, an incident that Israel declared was a mistake. On 18 January, a Palestinian civilian woman was killed and around 30 civilians injured, including several children, when an Israeli air strike targeted an empty building of the Ministry of the Interior. Israeli military operations also continued in the West Bank. From the beginning of the year until midday 22 January, Palestinian militants fired around 230 mortar shells and 110 rockets into the northern Negev, including the cities of Sderot and Ashkelon. Operations of Palestinian militants during the period from 24 January to 24 February 2008 33. During the reporting period, one Israeli was killed due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On 4 February, a suicide bomb attack took place in a shopping mall in the southern Israeli city of Dimona; one civilian woman was killed and several other people sustained injuries. While 14 A similar incident took place on 10 February in the West Bank, when Palestinian security forces prevented the distribution of humanitarian assistance through a civil society organization allegedly affiliated to Hamas. At least in this last case, the humanitarian agency was able to negotiate with Palestinian Authority officials the release of the goods and the resumption of distribution to its beneficiaries. 15 Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, The Humanitarian Monitor, December 2007; see www.ochaopt.org.