Atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon

Below, we provide a tiny sample of recent news stories describing some of the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon. These stories are matched by hundreds, even thousands, more.

Gaza

• June 10. On Friday evening, seven innocent Palestinian civilians lost their lives when an Israeli gunboat fired seven successive shells at Gazan families picnicking on the beach. The seven killed were all members of the Ghalia family: father, mother, and five of their six children.

Workers at ash-Shifa hospital in Gaza confirmed that Ali (25), Ilham (15) , Sabreen (4), Hanadi (1), and Haythem (6 months), along with their two parents, were killed. Sabreen was brought to the hospital with "brains outside" her head. Their deaths bring the number killed in Gaza in one 24-hour period to 14. Seven other Palestinians, of them three civilians, were killed in a series of extrajudicial assassinations. In all of these attacks, 36 Palestinians were injured, thirteen of whom are children.

(From "The Palestine Monitor" June 10, 2006)

• June 29. Ibrahim Albalawi was stuffing bags of vegetables into the boot of his car. "Last time we had to hide in the back of our house for days. It was very dangerous just to get to the toilet. There were bullets coming through the windows," he said. "I think they will attack again. Perhaps they will find the soldier, but if they don't I think they will attack anyway. That's what they do when they are angry."

(Gaza resident, quoted in "The Guardian", June 29)

• July 10. The Palestinian ministry of health revealed on Monday that the Israeli army has used a new type of explosive in its offensive on the Gaza Strip. These explosives contain toxins and radioactive materials which burn and tear the victim's body from the inside and leave long term deformations.

The ministry showed that most of the injuries which the hospitals receive result from huge explosions which cause burning and severing of limbs, including the inner parts of the body. This causes long term deformations.

It is added that doctors in Gaza have been forced to amputate limbs of at least 12 injured Palestinians as a result of injuries sustained in the current Israeli offensive.

(Published by Ma'an News Agency)

• July 11. IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] Continue to Target Civilians in the Gaza Strip: Three Children Killed and another Seriously Injured in an Air Raid on Beit Hanoun.

PCHR's preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 19:15 on Monday, 10 July 2006, an IOF plane fired a rocket at 4 children who were near Hayel Abdel Hamid Secondary School in northern part of Beit Hanoun. They were in an area previously used as a soccer field near their homes. The rocket fell amidst the children. Three were killed instantly; and their bodies were torn by the blast. The fourth child suffered serious injures. The dead children are: Mahfouth Farid Nuseir (16) , Ahmad Ghalib Abu Amsha (16), and Ahmad Fathi Shabat (16). The injured child is Raji Omar Deifallah (16).

(Palestinian Center for Human Rights)

• July 11. Some people weren’t as lucky. Rami, the young man who runs the little shop across the street from us, had been selling us juice and biscuits for the kids everyday for as long as we’d been renting that warehouse. He and two of his brothers were sitting in front of their shop as usual when the missile struck. Some of the fragments of the missile flew in their direction as well. Rami caught a face-full of those fragments and now lies in the Intensive Care Unit. His 18 year-old brother Bilal got a shard stuck in his heart and died. Bilal had just finished his Taujihi (baccalaureate exam) a few weeks ago and was looking forward to university. He was also the only one who could read and write, the pride of the family.

(Published by the Electronic Intifada)

• July 11. Occupied Jerusalem: The image of a dead Palestinian toddler, Khalid Wahbeh, wrapped in a blue cloth became a symbol of Israeli military aggression in Gaza.

The 15-month-old boy, who was buried yesterday in Gaza, was the latest victim of a family caught in an Israeli attack late last month. Many members of the family were killed when an Israeli missile hit the house where the boy's family gathered to celebrate the return of his uncle, Zakarya Ahmad, from Saudi Arabia after working there for five years as a journalist.The lunch banquet held at Khan Younis to honour Zakarya Ahmad turned into a nightmare. Zakarya, 47, and his pregnant sister, 25, mother of Khalid Wahbeh, were killed on the spot.

(Published in the UAE)

Lebanon

• July 16. Beirut - Eighteen people were burnt to death yesterday when a helicopter gunship hit a convoy of families fleeing Israel's blistering blitz on Lebanon as concerns mounted that the conflict is spiralling out of control.

The 18 civilians, including nine children, burnt to death when missiles fired from an Israeli helicopter gunship hit their convoy, had been fleeing with many others from border villages in southern Lebanon, UN and hospital sources said. Seven other people were killed in attacks on bridges and petrol stations in east and south Lebanon, including a strike that blocked the main border crossing into Syria.

(Published in the Independent)

• July 16. Israel rains bombs on Lebanon. An Israeli missile incinerated a van in southern Lebanon, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the campaign.

(Published by AFP)

• July 20. Dozens missing in Lebanon. Maha Mrouweh, a financial administrator at the Jabal Amal hospital in Tyre, told Aljazeera.net: "They are targeting the civilian cars. They are preventing the food from arriving in the south. They are preventing the Red Cross from arriving to the destroyed buildings. They are shooting the Red Cross." Civilians said that none of the casualties being treated in the hospital was a Hezbollah fighter.

"No one is in Hezbollah, I assure you," he said. "All of them are civilians. Hezbollah soldiers are not being sent to the hospital. We don't see them. These are very secret people. The Israelis are just killing civilian people." Ahmad Mrouweh, a doctor at the Jabal Amal hospital, said that he had received 20 bodies since the conflict had begun but many remained in the rubble of bombed houses or in burnt-out cars. "There are bodies still lying in cars," he said. "It's a disaster. Nobody can reach the hospital because all the roads are cut."

(Published in Al-Jazeera)

• July 21. It was hard to recognise Haret Hreik, with many buildings levelled. The few buildings which stood were blackened by the fires which raged within from bombs and missiles days earlier.

We had to navigate through the debris from destroyed buildings, which was strewn about the streets. Furnishings from apartments had been thrown by the blasts and hung from balconies and open windows. Cars and other vehicles, their colours either faded or difficult to discern from their shrouding of dust, were tossed on their sides, some bent and misshapen under layers of concrete, brick and metal.

Even residents who fled the area and came to check on their homes when the bombing subsided said they could not easily identify streets where they had once shopped with their families. Ihsan Mroweh, a civil engineer, fled the area a day before the Israeli bombardment of the southern suburbs of Beirut. When he returned to check on his home, which he renovated only three years ago, he could not find it.

Israeli jets hit central Beirut Wednesday 19 July 2006. Ahmed Fatfat, the Lebanese acting interior minister, said Israel was trying to destroy Lebanon's infrastructure, not just defeat Hezbollah. "Are they turning it into a second Iraq?" He asked.

Aljazeera's correspondent, Katia Nasir, reported that air raids had killed more than 55 people and destroyed much in the south during the day. The fighting has killed about 295 people in Lebanon and 25 Israelis, mostly civilians. In al-Srifa, at least 15 houses were completely demolished, the head of al-Srifa town municipality told Aljazeera. News reports said at least 12 villagers, including several children, were killed and 30 wounded. Afif Najdi, the mayor, said there had been a "massacre committed in Srifa".

(Published in Al-Jazeera)

• July 30. Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern Lebanon village as people slept Sunday, killing at least 56, most of them children. The missiles destroyed several homes in the village of Qana as people were sleeping. Rescue officials said at least 50 people were killed, and the bodies of 27 children were found in the rubble. Rescuers aided by villagers dug through the rubble by hand. At least 20 bodies wrapped in white sheets were taken away, including 10 children. A row of houses lay in ruins, and an old woman was carried away on a plastic chair. Villagers said many of the dead were from four families who had taken refuge in on the ground floor of a three-story building, believing they would be safe from bombings.

(Published by the Associated Press)