'Little Baghdad' in Gaza - bombs, fear and rage

'Little Baghdad' in Gaza - bombs, fear and rage

By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: Israeli News, Israel, Gaza

There are many corpses and wounded, every moment another casualty is added to the list of the dead, and there is no more room in the morgue.

Relatives search among the bodies and the wounded in order to bring the dead quickly to burial. A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent.

Mustapha Ibrahim saw all this on Saturday at one in the afternoon, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza. As a field investigator for a human rights organization, he thought he'd been immunized, but nothing prepared him for what he saw. Wounded people whose situation was less than serious were asked to leave Shifa, in order to free up beds.
Dr. Haidar Eid is a lecturer in Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University. He, too, saw the bodies and the wounded on Saturday. Also the children whose limbs had been amputated.

"To pick a time like this, 11:30 , to bomb in the hearts of cities, this is terrible. This choice was intended to cause as large a massacre as possible," he summed up.

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050636.html

This is the definition of state terror - the only difference between suicide bombers and air strikes is that air strikes often kill and maim more people.

Abu Muhammad was 200 meters from the hospital, when an awful sound was heard: Three large police centers which were bombed, were located close to the hospital. "Within seconds, this was a little Baghdad, bombs everywhere, smoke, fire, people not knowing where to hide. Fear everywhere, and rage and hatred," he said.

He himself ran to his daughters' school, like tens of thousands of other parents in the Strip. From 11:25 until 11:30, as some 50 warplanes bombed their targets, hundreds of thousands of children were in the streets. Some were coming from the first shift of classes, others were going to the second. "In the schoolyard I saw 500 frightened girls, crying. They did not know me, but clung to me," Abu Muhammad related.

With nothing in the way to stop it, and the U.S. cheering the bloodthirsty madman on...

this is over the top collective punishment.

Let's face it, Israel's leaders enjoy seeing the blood of the native Palestinians filling the streets of Gaza.

By: Safa Joudeh
General e-mailing
27 December 2008

I`ve never seen anything like this. It all happened so fast but the amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, even to me and I`m in the middle of it and a few hours have already passed. I think 15 locations were hit during the air raid on Gaza. The images are probably not broadcast in US media. There are piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you look at them you can see that a few of the young men are still alive, someone lifts a hand here, and another raise his head there. They probably died within moments because their bodies are burned, most have lost limbs, some have their guts hanging out and they`re all lying in pools of blood. Outside my home, (which is close to the universities) a bomb fell on a large group of young men, university students, they`d been warned not to stand in groups, it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. This was about 3 hours ago 7 were killed, 4 students and 3 of our neighbors kids, teenagers who were from the same family (Rayes) and were best friends. As I`m writing this I heard a funeral procession go by outside, I looked out the window and it was the 3 Rayes boys, They spent all their time together when they were alive, and now their sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14 year old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends laying in the street after they were killed. He hasn`t spoken a word since.

A little further down the street about an hour earlier 3 girls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a bomb fell. The girls bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other.

These are just a couple of images that i`ve witnessed. In all the locations people are going through the dead terrified of recognizing a family member among them. The city is in a state of alarm, panic and confusion, cell phones aren`t working, hospitals and morgues are backed up and some of the dead are still lying in the streets with their families gathered around them, kissing their faces, holding on to them. Outside the destroyed buildings old men are kneeling on the floor weeping. Their slim hopes of finding their sons still alive vanished after taking one look at what had become of their office buildings.

160 people dead in today`s air raid. That means 160 funeral processions, a few today, most of them tomorrow probably. To think that yesterday these families were worried about food and heat and electricity. At this point I think they -actually all of us- would gladly have Hamas sign off every last basic right we`ve been calling for the last few months forever if it could have stopped this from ever having happened.

The bombing was very close to my home. Most of my extended family live in the area. My family is ok, but 2 of my uncles` homes were damaged, another relative was injured.

I don`t know why I`m sending this email. It doesn`t even begin to tell the story on any level. Just flashes of thing that happened today that are going through my head.

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=30780

GazaFriends@lists.riseup.net
General mailing Saturday, December 27, 2008

27th December 2008, Gaza, Palestine - Human Rights Defenders from Lebanon, the UK, Poland, Canada, Spain, Italy and Australia are present in Gaza and are witnessing and documenting the current Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Due to Israel`s policy of denying access to international media, human rights defenders and aid agencies to the Occupied Gaza Strip, many of these Human Rights Defenders arrived in Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement`s boats.

FGM boats have broken Israel`s siege of Gaza five times in the past four months.


`At the time of the attacks I was on Omar Mukhtar street and witnessed a last rocket hit the street 150 meters away where crowds had already gathered to try to extract the dead bodies. Ambulances, trucks, cars - anything that can move is bringing injured to the hospitals. Hospitals have had to evacuate sick patients to make room for the injured. I have been told that there is not enough room in the morgues for the bodies and that there is a great lack of blood in the bloodbanks. I have just learned that among the civilians killed today was the mother of my good friends in Jabalya camp.` - Eva Bartlett (Canada) International Solidarity Movement

`Israeli missles tore through a children`s playground and busy market in Diere Balah, we saw the aftermath - many were injured and some reportedly killed. Every Hospital in the Gaza strip is already overwhelmed with injured people and does not have the medicine or the capacity to treat them. Israel is committing crimes against humanity, it is violating international and human rights law, ignoring the United Nations and planning even bigger attacks. The world must act now and intensify the calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel; governments need to move beyond words of condemnation into an active and immediate restraint of Israel and a lifting of the siege of Gaza` - Ewa Jasiewicz (Polish and British) Free Gaza Movment

`The morgue at the Shifa hospital has no more room for dead bodies, so bodies and body parts are strewn all over the hospital.` - Dr. Haidar Eid, (Palestinian, South African) Professor of Social and Cultural Studies, Al Aqsa University Gaza

`The bombs began to fall just as the children were on the streets walking back from school. I went out onto the stairs and a terrified 5 year old girl ran sobbing into my arms.`- Sharon Lock (Australian) International Solidarity Movement

`This is incredibly sad. This massacre is not going to bring security for the State of Israel or allow it to be part of the Middle East. Now
calls of revenge are everywhere.` Dr Eyad Sarraj - President of the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre

`As I speak they have just hit a building 200 metres away. There is smoke everywhere. This morning I went to the building close to where I live in Rafah that had been hit. Two bulldozers were immediately attempting to clear the rubble. They thought they had found all the bodies. As we arrived one more was found.` Jenny Linnel (British) International Solidarity Movement

`The home I am staying in is across from the preventive security compound. All the glass of the house shattered. The home has been severely damaged. Due to the siege there is no glass or building materials to repair this damage. One little boy in our house fainted. An eight year little boy was trembling on the ground for an hour. In front of our house we found the bodies of two little girls under a car, completely burnt. They were coming home from school. This is more than just collective punishment. We are being treated like laboratory animals. I have lived through the Israeli bombardment of Beirut and the Israel`s message is the same in Gaza as it was in Beirut- The killing of civilians. There was just another explosion outside!` Natalie Abu Eid (Lebanon) International Solidarity Movement

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=30772

simply horrible.

:thumbsup:

"This is the definition of state terror - the only difference between suicide bombers and air strikes is that air strikes often kill and maim more people."


How very true.