Bloody Scenes Haunt Kids as Bombs Fall in Israel-Gaza Fight
By Saud Abu Ramadan and Caroline Alexander Jul 22, 2014 8:24 AM ET
Instead of enjoying his summer holiday, 10-year-old Mohammed Bakker is grieving for two brothers and two cousins he saw die on a Gaza beach from Israeli navy shell fire.
“A bomb landed near us while we were playing soccer,” said Bakker, who comes from a family of fishermen. He ran to safety at a nearby cafe during the July 16 attack and within seconds “another bomb hit that same place and killed them,” he said. “I saw their bodies on the ground covered with blood and sand.”
The conflict in Gaza, an impoverished and congested sliver of land between the Mediterranean Sea and southern Israel, pits a high-tech army against Palestinian guerrillas. Caught in the middle are children like Bakker and Mika Cohen, a 10-year-old Israeli, who has lived with rocket fire from Gaza most of her life. Their trauma will linger long after the fighting stops.
“War usually takes the worst toll on the most vulnerable, of whom children and women tend to be among those who bear the greatest brunt,” said Pernille Ironside, UNICEF’s senior official in Gaza City, in a telephone interview. Each conflict makes it harder for future generations of Israeli and Palestinian leaders to foster “understanding, peace and bridge the divide,” she said.
At least 154 of the 605 Palestinians killed in the current fighting have been children, according to Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the Health Ministry in Gaza. Israel, like the U.S. and European Union, classifies the Hamas movement that controls Gaza as a terrorist organization and accuses it of using civilians as human shields. Israeli officials say the current campaign aims to stop the Gaza rocket fire and destroy infiltration tunnels.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-22/bloody-scenes-haunt-children-as-bombs-fall-in-israel-gaza-fight.html
