FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIVES

Boxer Tyrone McKenna proud to volunteer with Palestinian refugee kids

- By ROBERT HYNES

IT'S 4am and after a 29 hour journey from West Belfast to the West Bank, Tyrone McKenna is trying to get some sleep.

'The Mighty Celt' has travelled to Palestine to coach boxing at ACLAÍ Palestine, a community gym, set up by Ainle Ó Cairealláin, brother of Kneecap’s Móglaí Bap, in 2020.

But the sound of IDF vehicles and the removal of a family by Israeli soldiers from the home next door to where the welterweight boxer is staying wakes him up.

It’s an all too familiar sound for the 6,000 people Aida camp is home to.

There has been only one tap working in this refugee camp for the past few months. Not because there's a water shortage, but because Israel decides when Palestinians can drink and wash.

They also decide who lives and dies and two teenage footballers were shot dead by soldiers minutes from the camp during McKenna’s time there.

Two more lives taken in the ongoing Israeli slaughter of the Palestinian people. They were 16 and 17.

"As soon as I got there it was f***ing brutal," McKenna says of his July visit to the camp.

"You could see the conditions the kids are living in.

"There's been no running water there for the last couple of months, you see the lines, the queues of kids in the morning lining up for the one water tap for 6,000 people to fill up their buckets for their families.

"The first night I was there, my next door neighbours at 4am were dragged out of the house and arrested by the IDF.

"There were two footballers, 17 and 16, they were shot five minutes from the house by the IDF and the ambulance trying to get through was blocked off by the soldiers and then they opened fire on the kids to make sure they were dead."

Everyone in this camp has harrowing stories to tell. The person McKenna is staying with tells him how his friend was murdered by an Israeli settler.