Razan al-Najjar's mother joins medics attending to wounded in Gaza

Editor's Note: Click here for Middle East Eye's live coverage of Friday's protests in Gaza.

The mother of slain Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar on Friday joined volunteers attending to wounded protesters during the latest day of demonstrations in Gaza.

Photographs on Twitter showed Sabreen al-Najjar wearing her daughter’s blood-stained medic’s vest marked with the logo of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society as thousands of protesters braved Israeli snipers near the fence separating Gaza from Israel for an 11th straight week.

Razan was killed by a live bullet in the chest last Friday as she served as a volunteer medic on the frontlines of the demonstrations, sparking outrage at the Israeli army's targeting of medical staff.

An initial internal Israeli investigation dismissed her death as unintentional, but a social media campaign by Israeli officials seeking to link Razan to Hamas was met with anger and accusations of smearing the young woman in an attempt to retroactively justify her killing.

In an interview with Middle East Eye earlier this week, Sabreen said she believed her daughter had been deliberately targeted.

They [the Israelis] know Razan, they know she is a paramedic, she has been helping treat wounds since 30 March," said Sabreen.

Scores of people have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers since the “Great March of Return” protests began on 30 March, while thousands more have been shot and wounded.

Sabreen told MEE that her daughter had mainly concentrated on helping women and children injured during the demonstrations.

"My daughter would be out every Friday between 7am and 8pm. She was in the field doing her work, healing the wounds of the injured, and my daughter was a brave paramedic who was never scared of the Israeli snipers," Najjar's mother said.

"She used to come home with blood covering her uniform. She used to stay at the protests until everyone had left."

Israeli officials were criticised on Thursday for claiming Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar was acting as a human shield for Hamas when she was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Gaza on Friday.

The Israeli army's Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adraee, shared a video on social media that used truncated footage of an interview in which the 21-year-old Palestinian stated: “I am medic Razan al-Najjar, I am here on the front lines and I act as a human shield...”

The video cut the remainder of the sentence: "...as a rescuer for the injured on the front lines."

Social media users denounced the video as part of a broader Israeli strategy to discredit Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.

Najjar was the second Palestinian paramedic to be killed since the beginning of the Great March of Return, which advocates for the right of Gaza’s 1.3 million refugees to move back to the villages from where their families were displaced prior to and during the establishment of Israel in 1948.