Ras Burqa massacre

Ras Burqa massacre
Attack site
Location	Ras Burqa, Egypt
Coordinates	29°12′28″N 34°44′06″E / 29.20778°N 34.73500°E / 29.20778; 34.73500
Date	5 October 1985
Target	Israeli tourists
Attack type	Mass murder
Weapons	Machine gun
Deaths	7 Israeli civilians (including 4 children) 1 Egyptian soldier
Non-fatal injuries	4 Israeli civilians
Perpetrator	Lone Egyptian assailant (Suleiman Khater)

The Ras Burqa massacre was a shooting attack in October 1985 on Israeli vacationers in Ras Burqa, a beach resort area in the Sinai peninsula, in which seven, including four children, were killed by Egyptian soldier Suleiman Khater.

On 5 October 1985, an Egyptian soldier, Sulayman Khatir, machine-gunned a group of Israelis, killing three adults and four young children, on the dunes of Ras Burqa. The only survivor was 5-year old Tali Griffel, whose mother, Anita, shielded her with her body. According to eye witnesses, the Egyptian Central Security Forces who were nearby refused to help the wounded; furthermore, they stopped an Israeli doctor and other tourists at gunpoint from administering any aid to the victims of the shooting, and the wounded Israelis were left to bleed to death. Egyptian authorities countered that the Israelis bled to death "because this crazy soldier refused to let anyone near the area that some of the victims lay". The gunman killed one of the Egyptian policeman who tried to arrest him." Israel protested the Egyptian refusal to allow the victims to be treated by Israeli doctors or transferred to hospitals in Israel.

Khatir said the killings were not intentional. He said he could only see a group of people coming towards him in the dark, refusing his orders to stop.

In an interview with Peace Now, Tali Griffel described her memories of the attack: "For many years, I didn't think about what happened. I just blocked out everything and then slowly, slowly I sort of regained feeling. I remember as the shooting started, my mother grabbed me and lay down, putting me under her. She whispered to me, keeping me calm. I can still recall the feeling of the jolt as she got shot. Yet, she continued to hold me and talk to me as she bled to death. When I crawled out, I sat there alone for a very long time. The Egyptian police came and took me away to a dark room where they interrogated me for hours."

Seven people were killed in the attack:

After the shootings, Egyptian authorities claimed that the perpetrator Sulayman Khatir was mentally ill. During the initial interrogations, Khatir claimed that he had been unaware of the identity or nationality of the people he had shot and that they had made no offense or provocation toward him. The only reason why he had opened fire was that, as Khatir said, they had trespassed on a prohibited territory. He was tried by a closed military tribunal and on 28 December 1985 sentenced to life in prison at hard labor. Ten days later, on 8 January 1986, Khatir was found dead in his prison hospital room hanging by a strip torn from a sheet of plastic. The authorities declared his death a suicide.Opposition parties in Egypt claimed that he had been murdered.