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Report: Eye-witnesses Speak Out Despite Israeli Efforts to Bury Evidence Of Massacres In Jenin
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An Israeli army bulldozer makes its way through the rubble of homes destroyed in the Jenin refugee camp on Thursday. |
LONDON, April 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Residents of Jenin who fled the refugee camp now speak about Israeli atrocities and massacres, despite Israel’s relentless efforts to block foreign reporters and to bury the slaughtered Palestinians in mass graves, a U.K. daily newspaper reported Saturday.
"I saw it all with my own eyes," said a man to the Independent correspondents. "I saw people bleeding to death in the streets. I saw a 10-year-old child lying dead. There was a big hole in his side and his arm had been blown away.
"I saw them burying the bodies. They started work on the grave a few days ago. I recognized some of the bodies in it. I can give you the names."
And he reeled them off: "Mohammed Hamed, Nidal Nubam and Mustafa Shnewa". He said the mass grave he saw was in a neighborhood called Harat Al-Hawashiya. "They dug a big hole in the ground. I saw them filling it in today. They had a big bulldozer pushing dirt in on top of it."
“And so the grieving of Jenin will not be certain where their relatives lie. They will not return to bury their dead, however – the Israeli army will have done that to keep the devastating sight of the carnage away from the eyes of the waiting world,” said the paper.
The paper’s correspondent’s described the scene: Yesterday, though, they were unable to stifle the evil smell. The reek of putrefying bodies wafted out of the narrow, rubble-strewn alleys which were barred for a fifth day to international aid agencies trying to send ambulances and doctors to evacuate the many wounded, and recover the dead.
The Independent said that electricity supplies in Jenin Hospital are so low that the morgue's refrigerators are not running and that decomposing bodies, retrieved from other parts of the West Bank town, have been buried in the hospital gardens.
The paper quoted a U.N. official who said that as you get to the edge of the camp it gets “incredibly smelly”. “How much of the camp still stands is unclear; reports say that bulldozers have cut a swath through homes near the entrance – a tactic which the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, used against the refugees of Gaza 30 years ago, when he was an army commander trying to subdue the same forces that have now reared up against him anew,” he said.
The residents of Jenin fall into three categories, the paper said. The unknown number in the camp itself. An estimated 2000 to 3000 have fled the camp and are living in schools and mosques in poor conditions, with limited supplies. Thousand of residents of the remaining town, parts having been devastated by tanks, bulldozers and rockets from helicopters.
It may be a tedious and complicated task to trace the dead, but those refugees who have poured out of Jenin have been telling their stories to volunteers who are compiling meticulous records of the testimony of every refugee who staggered beaten and humiliated by Israeli soldiers out of detention, reported the Independent.
One of the refugees, Jamal Wardun was detained in the refugee camp when he tried to take his wife to hospital. “She was pregnant and going into labor. The last time he saw her was when he was forced to leave her behind in the street,” said the paper.
On Saturday, the European Union said it was deeply concerned by the massacre reports.
"(The EU) finds the reports of the events which happened at the Jenin camp very alarming. If they are confirmed, they will have very serious consequences," the E.U. said in a statement from Madrid, which currently holds the presidency of the 15-nation bloc. It did not go into details, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Israel has denied the allegations of indiscriminate killings and mass graves but this has been impossible to verify because journalists were not allowed into the camp until Friday and were then denied access to areas where the fighting was fiercest.
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