Gaza under fire: Children found next to dead mothers

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Friday, 9 January 2009

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Fire and smoke caused by an explosion from Israeli military operations is seen on the outskirts of Gaza City

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Four small starving children too weak to stand were found next to the bodies of their dead mothers by ambulancemen who had been trying to reach their Gaza neighbourhood for four days after it came under Israeli attack, the Red Cross said yesterday.

In what the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called a "shocking incident", another man, also too weak to stand, was found in the same bombed house, along with at least 12 corpses on mattresses.

Accusing Israel of violating international law by imposing "unacceptable" delays on rescuers trying to reach the scene, the ICRC said that when ambulance crews were finally allowed to access the area in Gaza City's Zeitoun district during a bombardment pause on Wednesday, they found 15 other survivors, including several wounded in another house. In a third house, they found three more corpses.

The ICRC said that because the military had erected large earth walls around the site, the crews were forced to use donkey carts to convey the children and the wounded to ambulances. Pierre Wettach, the ICRC's head of delegation for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said: "The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded."

The organisation accused the Israeli military of "violating its obligations under international law to care for and evacuate the wounded". The criticism was unusual as it generally refrains from publicly attacking the conduct of warring parties in conflict zones.

The Zeitoun district has been the focus of heavy fighting and Red Cross rescuers yesterday recovered 105 injured people there, according to a spokesman Iyad Nasr. There were especially heavy casualties among the extended Samouni family when the compound, in which they had been told by the military to shelter the previous day, was shelled early on Monday morning. The bombardment occurred after one person had tried to leave, according to family members.

Details remain sketchy, but the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem yesterday produced testimony from Meysa Fawzi a-Samouni, 19, who lost her husband among the "20 to 30" dead in the attack. She and her infant daughter had managed to get to hospital after being given first aid by Israeli soldiers keeping other male members of the clan captive in another house.

Mrs Samouni told B'Tselem field officers: "When the missile struck, I lay down with my daughter under me... After the smoke and dust cleared a bit, I looked around and I saw 20 to 30 people who were dead, and about 20 who were wounded." The agency said it had not been able to cross-check the testimony as normal due to the conditions in Gaza.

Israel said it would investigate any formal complaint but stressed that delays in allowing ICRC to reach casualties were a result of fighting and again accused Hamas of using Gaza civilians as human shields. The Israeli military said it was co-operating to help civilians. "The IDF [Israel Defence Forces] in no way intentionally targets civilians and has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives and risk injury in order to assist innocent civilians."

Other aid agencies have also complained about the difficulty of moving around Gaza. Geoff O'Donoghue, of Cafod, said that a three-hour occasional halt to military activities was "insufficient to allow meaningful movements to reach those in need".