22 Facts About Tom Hurndall

Thomas Hurndall was a British photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement, and an activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Tom Hurndall was left in a coma and died nine months later.

Tom's mother Jocelyn Hurndall has written a biography of him called Defy the Stars: The Life and Tragic Death of Tom Hurndall, published in April 2007 and reprinted in May 2008 with the alternative title My Son Tom: The Life and Tragic Death of Tom Hurndall.

Tom Hurndall was educated at Winchester College, a boarding independent school in Winchester in England.

Aged 21, Tom Hurndall took a working break from his degree course at Manchester Metropolitan University in photographic journalism to join the "human shields" in Iraq before the 2003 Iraq War.

Tom Hurndall arrived in the town of Rafah on 6 April 2003 and began emailing images of the Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinians back to his family.

Tom Hurndall then ran out into the street to save two children and was shot in the head by an IDF soldier.

Tom Hurndall was taken to a Palestinian hospital in Rafah, and was declared clinically dead.

Tom Hurndall died on 2004, after nine months in a coma.

Tom Hurndall's father told a British inquest that, according to ISM and Palestinian witnesses, Hurndall had seen a group of children playing and had noticed that bullets were hitting the ground between them.

Several children had run away but some were "paralysed with fear" and Tom Hurndall went to help them.

The IDF initially refused more than a routine internal inquiry, which concluded that Tom Hurndall was shot accidentally in the crossfire, and suggested that his group's members were essentially functioning as human shields.

However, witnesses at the demonstration in the Palestinian town of Rafah said he had been hit by a rifle bullet while trying to shield the children rather than having been merely hit in the crossfire, and Tom Hurndall's parents demanded an investigation.

Idier Wahid Taysir Hayb claimed he had shot at a man in military fatigues although photographic evidence clearly showed Tom Hurndall was wearing a bright orange jacket denoting he was a foreigner.

Tom Hurndall claimed to have aimed four inches from Hurndall's head, "but he moved".

Chen Kugel, an Israeli forensic pathologist appearing for the defence, stated that the pneumonia had not been properly treated and "the large amounts of morphine" Tom Hurndall was receiving contributed to his death.

On 10 April 2006, an English inquest jury at St Pancras coroner's court in London found that Tom Hurndall had been "unlawfully killed".

Tom Hurndall's father told reporters that there had been a "general policy" to shoot civilians in the area without fear of reprisals, as stated by the soldier who fired the shot, Taysir Hayb.

Tom's mother Jocelyn Hurndall wrote a commentary in The Guardian on 10 January 2004, in which she stated:.

On 13 October 2008, Channel 4 broadcast a dramatised documentary The Shooting of Thomas Tom Hurndall, which was written by Simon Block and directed by Rowan Joffe.

Anthony and Jocelyn Tom Hurndall were interviewed at length in The Observer prior to the airing of the documentary:.

Tom Hurndall memorialised in second movement of US composer Philip Munger's 2003 cantata The Skies are Weeping which is titled after by Thushara Wijeratna's poem.