Inside Gaza: 'The hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside'
By Sami Abdel-Shafi in Gaza city
Sunday, 28 December 2008
I am safe, and yet I feel like a walking dead person. Everything around me shows it. It is hard to write something of any coherence while exposed to cold winter air and to the smell that lingers after the detonation of Israeli bombs. They must have been massive. During the bombing I opened all the windows around my apartment to avoid them imploding as a result of the vacuum shocks sweeping through Gaza City after each enormous bang. While the bombing continued, I jumped down two flights of stairs to my father's house, to make sure he was OK. Should I open up all his windows too? That would expose the old man to the risk of illness. We have no medical care or medication. However, the risk from shattering glass was greater, so I opened them all.
(The day had already started - the graduation ceremony was beginning. That would indicate the time to be at least 9 am. At 9 am, the temperature was about 54 degrees. No precipitation. The ceremony could have started at 10 am, but assuming 9 am. By 10 am the temperature was 63 degrees. The wind was 5 mph from the WSW. That sort of weather is very draining on older people in the winter or summer - as the temperatures in some parts of the world never get above 60 in the summer.)
Mobile phones did not work, because of electricity outages and the flood of attempted calls. I flipped the electricity generator on so that we could watch the news. (I am sure a good son that he is, he has bought his father an electric heater just in case the power goes out as it routinely does and or it gets really really cold. In which case, he could turn the generator on and ensure his father stayed warm.) We wanted to understand what was going on in our own neighbourhood. However, this was impossible. Israeli surveillance drones flew overhead, scrambling the reception. All I could do was step outside, where I found crowds of frantic people, lines of rising smoke and the smell of charred buildings and bodies that lay around targeted sites nearby. Somebody said the bombs had been launched in parallel raids over the entire Gaza Strip. What was the target here? Perhaps a police station about 200 metres away. Other bombs annihilated blocks less than a kilometre away, where one of the main police training centres stood. When the strikes began, a graduation ceremony for more than 100 recruits in a civil law enforcement programme was under way. These were the young men trained to organise traffic, instil civil safety and maintain law and order. Many of them were killed, it is said, in addition to the Gaza Strip's police chief. (Many who were killed were Hamas leaders - terrorists who usually hid in tunnels, not in offices. Police cadets / thugs / brownshirts ... whether in Gaza or Kabul, by whatever label they are given, they smell the same.)
News came by word of mouth. There had been more than 150 deaths and more than 200 people were injured or missing under rubble after the first two hours of bombing. Israel had said it would continue the offensive and deepen it if necessary. Likewise, it was said that Hamas had launched more rockets at southern Israeli towns, causing one death and four injuries. Gaza had never seen anything like the numbers of dead bodies lying on its streets. Hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside.
Bombs targeting a Hamas security force building badly damaged an adjacent school, and several children were injured. We heard of many other targets around the Gaza Strip. It reminds me of the "shock and awe" campaign the Allies launched over Baghdad in 2003. But shock and awe did not bring stability or peace. (It did end the reign of Saddam, and comparing Gaza to Iraq is stretching things a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit).
These bombs were launched by Israel, as we had known they would be. The world watched the situation simmer then boil over, but did nothing. There are some who believe that hell is divided into different classes. The ordinary people of Gaza have long been caught in the tormenting underworld. Now, if the world does not heed what has happened here, our situation will worsen. We will be trapped in the first class of hell.
(Implication is it was one sided - this simmering. Israel tolerated for much longer than most reasonable people or countries would have.)
Gaza
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