• 27 May 2002: Sinai Keinan, aged 18 months, and her grandmother Ruth Peled, 56, were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the Bravissimo café in Petah Tikva, Israel. Fifty other people were injured, many of them children. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility.

• 27 April 2002: three armed men attacked residents of Adora, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. In the bedroom of one house a gunman killed five-year old Danielle Shefi as she hid under a bed and wounded her mother Shiri, her brothers Uriel, aged four and Eliad, aged two. Elsewhere in the settlement, they also killed three adults. Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing of Hamas) claimed responsibility for what it described as an ''heroic and daring operation.''(1)

• 29 March 2002: Tuvya Viesner, 79, from Tel Aviv and Michael Orlanski, 70, from Petah Tikva were stabbed to death while visiting relatives at the Israeli settlement of Netzarim in Gaza. Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for what they described as an ''heroic and courageous assault.''

• 27 March 2002: Twenty nine people - 27 of them civilians - were killed and 140 injured when an attacker exploded a bomb attached to himself in the dining room of a hotel in Netanya during a meal to celebrate the Jewish festival of Passover. Nineteen of the dead were aged over 70. The oldest, Chanah Rogan, was 90. Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility.

• 27 January 2002: Pinhas Tokatli, aged 81, was killed and more than one hundred people were injured when Wafa Idris exploded a bomb attached to herself in Jaffa Street, Jerusalem, an area of shops and restaurants. Wafa Idris was the first female Palestinian ''suicide bomber''. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility.

• 4 November 2001: Menashe Regev, 14 and Shoshana Ben-Yishai, 16, were killed by a gunman who shot at an Israeli bus in Jerusalem. Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

These are just six of more than 130 attacks since 29 September 2000 in which civilians were killed by members of Palestinian armed groups and by Palestinian individuals who may not have been acting on behalf of a group. (2) In many attacks, perpetrators deliberately targeted people like five year-old Danielle Shefi and 79 year-old Tuvya Viesner, knowing without any doubt that their victims were not members of the Israeli armed forces. Other perpetrators attacked large groups of people in a busy street, a bus, a café, a hotel or a market, knowing that many if not most of the victims would be civilians.

Amnesty International condemns unreservedly direct attacks on civilians as well as indiscriminate attacks, whatever the cause for which the perpetrators are fighting, whatever justification they give for their actions. The organization has repeatedly condemned attacks on civilians in reports and statements and in meetings and other communications with armed groups that have attacked civilians in Israel and the Occupied Territories and in countries around the world. (3) Targeting civilians and being reckless as to their fate are contrary to fundamental principles of humanity which should apply in all circumstances at all times. These principles are reflected in international treaty law and in customary law. (See section 5)