The Killing of Rouzan al-Najjar

The Great March of Return protests between March and December 2018 were some of the largest in the recent history of Gaza. Israeli security forces responded with the use of live ammunition on an unprecedented scale; over six thousand civilians were injured during the protests, and more than 150 were killed. Thirty-five children were among the dead.

On the evening of 1 June 2018, a large group of Palestinian protesters gathered at one of the five principal protest sites, near the village of Khuzaa. At 6:31pm, a shot was fired from beyond the border fence into the crowd. The bullet killed Rouzan al-Najjar, 21, a volunteer medic. Two of her fellow medics, Mohammed Shafee and Rami Abo Jazar, were wounded at the same time. The death of al-Najjar, who was widely revered among the protesters, sent shockwaves throughout Palestine.

Forensic Architecture was commissioned by the New York Times to undertake spatial analysis of the scene of al-Najjar’s death. By digitally recreating the protest site from video evidence, we used the precise location of the three gunshot victims as a means to derive the trajectory of the bullet, and trace its ‘cone of fire’ back to its origin, a sniper’s berm at the border fence.