JERUSALEM, Jan 18 (AFP) - An Israeli teenager critically wounded when a Palestinian rocket hit the southern Israeli town of Sderot, was pronounced brain dead Tuesday, hospital officials said.
Ella Abuksis, 17, was wounded Saturday night when the Qassam rocket slammed into the street where she was walking home from a youth group with her 10-year-old brother, Tamir, and friends.
One eyewitness cited in the Israeli media said Ella was trying to protect Tamir as the rocket hit.
Tamir was moderately wounded in the attack, launched by Palestinian militants in the northern Gaza Strip.
The news came as Sderot held a day of mourning for four of its residents, three of them children, who were killed in multiple rocket strikes on the town last year.
Sderot has been on the frontline of Palestinian rocket attacks from northern Gaza, with army statistics showing the desert town has been hit by 112 Qassams since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000.
Built by militants from the radical Hamas movement, the makeshift projectiles are named after the group`s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
01/18/2005 17:21 GMT - AFP