'As I ran I saw three of my children. All dead'

[ProgressiveMuslim]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israelHazem Balousha in Gaza City and Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Tuesday 6 January 2009
Article history

Wounded Palestinians pour into overrun hospitals as Israel continues to pound the Gaza Strip in the 10th day of its offensive Link to this video The small dead bodies were laid next to one another on the tiled floor of the morgue corridor, the blood drained from their cheeks. One had a bandage still wrapped around his head, another lay with his mouth half-open in his oversized, bloodstained clothes.

For a week the Samouni family had taken shelter in their small, single-storey home in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City, and there they survived wave after wave of Israeli bombing and artillery strikes. Then came Israel's ground offensive, the next phase in what Israel argues is a necessary and justified battle against the Palestinian militants firing rockets out of Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, promised an "iron fist" for Hamas and said he would treat the civilian citizens of Gaza with "silk gloves," though the Palestinians of Gaza know perhaps better than most that there are few silk gloves in war.

The Samouni family woke on Sunday morning to find themselves surrounded by camouflaged Israeli troops and dozens of tanks, who had set up a position in the rubble of what was once the large Jewish settlement of Netzarim. As dawn broke, the soldiers seized control of the highest buildings in the district and ordered several of the neighbours into the Samouni family home and there a dozen of them waited, without food and without water.

"All day Sunday there was shooting and bombing. We didn't have anything to eat, we didn't have water to drink - our water tanks had been damaged in the fighting," said Wael Samouni, 32, who on a normal day would be manning his stall at the vegetable market. "We couldn't sleep."

He stepped out of the house briefly and saw a man shooting an M16 assault rifle. He mistook him for a Palestinian militant. Samouni shouted at him: "Please don't come here. They'll kill us. Go away." But as the gunman turned round, it became clear he was an Israeli soldier. The soldier shouted back in Arabic: "Bring me your ID." Samouni disappeared back into his house and decided not to venture out again.

They passed another night under the bombing and artillery strikes, grateful to have made it through to morning. Samouni remembered sitting in the crowded living room yesterday, surrounded by his neighbours, wondering how much longer they had to endure. It was 6.30am.

"We were sitting and suddenly there was bombing on our house and everyone started to run. There were three rockets. I have no idea where they came from," said Samouni. The rockets, believed now to be tank shells, hit the building and brought it crashing down. "I looked to my side, took hold of my boy Mohammad and I started to run. As I ran I looked back and saw on the floor my mother, two cousins and three of my children. All dead," he said. Samouni and the others ran from the house, some raised white cloths as flags and they made it to a patch of safe ground where they were taken to hospital by car.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel

[Howardx]

1. bump

looks like its being ignored