Tag: Khan Younis - Page 7 - International Solidarity Movement

“It was the hardest day of our lives”

Wednesday 14th January, 2009

In an escalation of the ground offensive in the south of Gaza, Israeli forces terrorised the population of Khoza’a, a small rural community east of Khan Younis. They entered the area at about 3.00am on the morning of Tuesday 13th January in an incursion lasting until Tuesday evening. This follows heavy missile strikes on Khoza’a in recent days, notably on Saturday 10th January.

According to a local municipality official, approximately 50 homes were bulldozed along with farmland, olive and citrus groves. The scent of lemons could faintly be determined whilst navigating the wreckage, emanating from so many mangled trees. A family explained how their home was demolished with them inside it. They sheltered in the basement as the upper storeys were destroyed. Later they realized the basement itself was being attacked and narrowly missed being crushed to death by escaping through a small hole in the debris.

Iman Al-Najar was with her family in their home when military D-9 bulldozers began to demolish it. They managed to escape and Iman then encouraged some of her neighbours to try to leave the vicinity. The group of women were instructed by Israeli soldiers to leave by a particular street. They had children with them and carried white flags, yet when they reached the street Israeli special forces concealed in a building opened fire on them and shot 50 year-old Rowhiya Al-Najar. The other women desperately tried to rescue her but the gunfire was too heavy and they had to flee for their lives. An ambulance was also prevented from reaching her and she bled to death in the street.

Meanwhile Iman and about 200 other residents whose homes had been destroyed had gathered near her uncle’s house which was protecting them to some degree from the shooting. However, this area in turn was also attacked. Iman described how the bulldozers began piling debris up around them, effectively creating a giant hole that they were standing in. They were literally about to be buried alive. By some miracle they managed to also escape from this situation by crawling on their hands and knees for about 150 metres. It was extremely difficult for them to move, especially with the injured and the elderly.

Israeli soldiers deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians in Khoza’a

The terrified residents then sought sanctuary at a local UNRWA school. But when they got there missiles were being fired around it and they had to retreat. Finally they managed to leave the area entirely and walked several kilometres to where friends were able to pick them up. Iman’s 14 year-old brother Mohammed was missing for 12 hours and she feared he was dead. He had been detained by soldiers in a house along with a neighbour who had begged to be let out to find her children but was not allowed to do so. When the soldiers had shot Rowhiya Al-Najar, Mohammed said they had been singing and dancing and forced him to do the same. When he refused, they threatened to shoot him too.

“It was the hardest day of our lives,” repeated Iman over and over again. She had nothing left in the world but the clothes she was standing up in, but under the circumstances she was lucky to escape with her life. As in so many other parts of the Gaza Strip, the atrocities committed against civilians in Khoza’a amount to war crimes.

Missiles believed to contain white phosphor were deployed by the Israeli military during this attack. ISM volunteers photographed a fist-sized lump of flaming material found on the ground next to a burnt-out home. It was still burning from the previous day. The only way to extinguish it was to bury it, but it would instantly re-ignite if uncovered. It was giving off a thick grey smoke with a foul stench. Doctors at the Al Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which received 50 casualties that day from Khoza’a, described serious chemical burns and victims being covered in a white powder which continued to burn them. Many people were also suffering from serious breathing difficulties after inhaling smoke emitted by this weapon.

Dr. Ahmed Almi, a member of the delegation of Egyptian doctors who finally gained entry to the strip to support Gazan hospitals during the crisis, outlined some of the most serious cases. Four of them died in the hospital after doctors battled to save them. He commented that some of the injuries were so horrific they must have been inflicted by abnormal munitions. He gave the example of a man who had been shot and sustained a small entry wound but massive exit wound, 40-50 cm wide. 13 people were killed overall during this incursion according to medical sources.

Before the Israeli war on Gaza began, the ISM team here had been working with the farming community in Khoza’a, accompanying local farmers as they succeeded to access their land to plant winter wheat. The IOF had prevented them from reaching their fields, in some cases for over five years. Israeli soldiers shot at them, even during the ceasefire. The same ceasefire which Israel claims was broken by Palestinians.

Children under fire

By Fida Qishta – ISM co-ordinator in the Gaza Strip

Visit Fida’s blog here.

According to news reports, over 665 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed,and more than 2950 injured. Of those, more than 214 children and more than 88 women were killed. This is the story of two of those children.

January 2, 2008 Al Qarara, Khan Yunis – According to Mahmud Mosa Alstal, 27 years old, the children`s uncle, “I was sitting down in the building. The children were playing 40 meters away from me, and they were 500 meters away from their house. I could hear the drone (Israeli unmanned drone). I thought it would attack one of the police stations or one of the government sites. I looked at it. Suddenly the drone fired a rocket. I told myself it was close. It could be targeting a car nearby. But when I ran there to investigate, Iran first to the place where the children were playing. I was shocked when I saw the three children on the ground. The head of Abed Alsatar, who was nine years-old, flew far away from the place, and also Abed Rabo nine years-old and his brother Mohammed 12 years-old were hit. I called other people to come and help me to take them to the hospital. When they saw the scene, they also were shocked and they left. I stopped a car passing by and I took them to the hospital, it was difficult for the ambulance to get there because the attack just happened and the area was hard to reach. You know that four of the children’s uncles were killed, not during this attack, but in the last few years, also by the Israeli army. What can I say. They went to see their uncles in heaven. They are together now.”

30 year-old Um Mohammed, the mother of Abed Rabo and Mohammed told us,”They were playing. They didn’t do any thing wrong. Mohammed was in fifthgrade. The first exam started Saturday, when the first and biggest attack happened throughout the Gaza Strip. The didn’t even take the exam. Today they took their lunch and went to the mosque to pray and then to play. They went to play in an empty piece of land nearby. Suddenly a drone missile hitt hem.”

“Mohammed was helpful. He helped me a lot. He was the oldest of my sons.Yesterday, I was telling them the story of our prophet Ibrahim, who God asked to sacrifice his son Ishmael. I found them telling me the next part of the story and telling me the end. They knew it.”

“They loved playing football. They played together most of the time in the playground when they were playing football.”

“I used to call Abed Rabo, Abood. But Mohammed, we called him Mohammed.They just had their lunch. Mohammed asked if he could do anything for me before he went out. I asked him to put the teapot on the fire before he left because we have no gas. He put it on the fire and put in the tea and the sugar. The tea even didn’t boil before I got the news that Mohammed was killed, and he is a martyr now.”

“The last joke that Mohammed told before he was killed, he told me and his dad about one of our neighbors. He’s a short man. He made a tent, short like him. He just made it for himself and not for other people. If a tall person wanted to visit, he would have to stoop. But they are children and short still. They can get inside.”

“God’s mercy be upon you Mohammed. I will miss you a lot. Abed too used tohelp me a lot. He used to help me when I was cooking, starting the fire with me. Today he woke up this morning, and he told me that breakfast was ready. And I found he made the tea too. He used to wake up early, everyday, starting the fire to make breakfast.”

“We want the other nations to stand side by side with us. They can’t stop the Israelis? They can stop them, but they don’t because its not their sake to stop them.”

We just look for Allah and wait for Allah to help us. Let them take their time and watch us and to see the children’s blood. I lost two of my children, but 11 children and their parents were killed from Alrayan family yesterday. I’m not better than them. I just lost two children.”

“My children were upset and felt pain when they saw what happened to the other children during the Israeli attack on Saturday. I used to change the channel and wouldn’t let them see the other children’s dead bodies so as to not scare them. I didn’t like them to see these scenes because it will effect them, Mohammed didn’t sleep all night. When they had exams, they wouldn’t try to wake me up in the morning. They would get dressed and go to school early, because they were thinking that if they went early they would come back early to play.”

“This morning I told my little daughter to wash her face. She said to me,did I sleep enough to need to wash my face? All night they don’t sleep because of the bombing and the air-strikes. What have we done for the Israelis to attack us like that! Tell me what we have done?”

“We are nine in the family, I have five daughters and three sons, I lost two and now we are seven including me and their Dad.”

“It’s true that I lost two of my sons but when I see other people’s misery I feel that my misery is small.”

“I’m like any person living here. I could die any night, killed by an Israeli attack. They just attack the area. I could be killed, who knows. I will die today or tomorrow or now. All the Palestinians here are threatened. I say every day, tomorrow I could die.”

“They want us to leave our homes, but it is in their dreams. They are wrong. We will not leave our homes. We will always stay here. It will not be like the 1948 war. We will stay in our homes, and we prefer to die in our homes. It’s an honor to die in our country rather than to escape. They will not evacuate our land and take it. They occupied our land and they came to us. Why did they come to us? We didn’t go to their homes but they came to ours. I don’t know what they want from the Palestinian people, or why they occupied us? We are strong in our faith, and God will always help us.”

It’s really hard to post from here

By Eva Bartlett
ingaza.wordpress.com

Every time I manage to make it back to Gaza to write for a period, a new calamity.

“They’re shelling Awda hospital,” in Jabaliya, the news reports. Our internationals there at the moment report it was two shells at a police post next to the hospital, one hospital worker getting shrapnel to the head, but surviving.

The numbers slaughtered and injured are so high now – 521 and 3,000 as of this morning, Gaza time – that sitting next to a dead or dying person is becoming normal. The stain of blood on the ambulance stretcher pools next to my coat, the medic warning me my coat may be dirtied. What does it matter? The stain doesn’t revolt me as it would have, did, one week ago. Death fills the air, the streets in Gaza, and I cannot stress that this is no exaggeration.

Back in Gaza city briefly, after a day and night again with the medics, I’ll try to summarize, though there is too much to tell, too much incoming news, and it’s too hard to reach people, even those just a kilometer away. Before dropping me off, the medics had gone to different gas stations, searching for gas for the ambulances. Two stations, no luck. Some at a final source fills their tanks. The absence of gas is critical. So is the absence of bread, which goes on, the lines longer than ever yet.

A text tells me (at this point I have to rely on news from phone and text messages, when reception is available) that the UN says 13,000 have been displaced since these attacks, that 20% of the dead are women and children, 70% are without drinking water. There are many more facts to sober one drunk on apathy, but I can’t source or share them now.

The Israeli army occupied areas in the north, shelled houses, demolishing them, many injuries, dead, many off-limits to the ambulances.

Beit Hanoun is occupied by the Israeli army, which is now controlling the entry points to the northern region, cutting it off. One small, sub-par hospital without an ICU is staggering under the influx of injured from house demolitions, shellings, shootings… Two ambulances serve this region, I don’t have any information on their condition, the amount of petrol they have, or what areas of the Beit Hanoun region are accessible or not.

Entering via an ambulance to take an emergency case to Gaza’s Shifa hospital, I see the Beit Hanoun hospital crammed, with a frenzied air, families desperate to get their injured care…those who have been able to get to the hospital. Mohammed Sultan, 19, stands dazed with a gunshot graze to the back of his head. From Salateen, northwestern Gaza, he had to walk 1 km before a car could reach him and take him here.

The man we transfer to Shifa has been shot in the face. He is about 35, is a civilian, was in or near his house. His face has exploded, and we move as fast as possible over torn up roads, ambulance jarring as we move and as the medics try to administer delicate care. It’s on everyone’s mind that the army is present here, that our safety is not.

Beit Lahia and beyond, in the northwest, are mostly off-limits to ambulances, leaving the wounded and dead where they are. The calls from there for help, for evacuation, have been non-stop and now go ignored.

In Zaytoun, reports have one extended family being separated men from women, locked inside two houses, and the houses shelled a day later (this morning, around 11 am). Bodies are still being pulled and carted to Shifa hospital. Many estimate that as many as 20 were killed, 10s more injured. I will go to Shifa after this to try to confirm numbers, though again the disclaimer that confirmation in these conditions takes time (and working phone lines). Zaytoun area is occupied in parts, making ambulance access again nearly-impossible, if not fully, I don’t know at this point.

I’m told that areas further south have been invaded, shelled, occupied. Like Zahara, and Juhadik in central Gaza. Press TV reporter Yusuf al Helo told me this morning that the reason he hadn’t answered my phone calls last night (he is one of the better sources for up-to-date news) was because his uncle, in the extended Zaytoun area, just off the main Salah el Din street, was killed when Israeli forces shelled their house. “My cousins were in the house too,” he told me, as were many more injured. Over 15 hours after the assault, Yusuf updates me: “until now they still haven’t been able to take the injured and dead out of my uncle’s house.”

Last night, in a Jabaliya hospital, I talk with one nurse who tells us that his brother Adham, an 8 year old, was shot in the neck and in the chest at 4:30 pm that day (January 4th) when on his rooftop in the same northwestern area that ambulances now cannot reach.

Mohammed tells me his village, Khosar, east of Khan Younis was shelled in an agricultural area, one of the many open areas continuing to be pummelled. One of the many areas period: open, residential, market…

Painfully, I learn that after a hasty funeral, Arafa’s mourning tent was shelled yesterday, mourners inside. At least five injuries and much insult.

At 4:37, Haidar updates me that “the house of the El Eiwa family, from Shejaiyee, was attacked. Lots of casualties, including children.”

He updates me on a BBC report: “the one o’clock news on the local BBC channel interviewed a Norwegian doctor in Gaza wo said some of the victims bear traces of depleted uranium in their bodies.”