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UN Envoy Says Jenin Camp "Horrific Beyond Belief"
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| A foreign aid
worker bursts into tears as she views the magnitude of the
damage in the center of Jenin refugee camp
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JENIN,
West Bank, April 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The
devastation of Jenin refugee camp, invaded by the Israel occupation
army, is "horrific beyond belief," UN special envoy Terje
Roed-Larsen said Thursday, April 18, slamming Israel for not allowing
rescue teams in after the attack.
"It
is totally destroyed, it looks like an earthquake has hit it,"
said Roed-Larsen, visiting the northern West Bank camp with Red Cross
and UN workers.
"It
is totally unacceptable and horrific beyond belief," he told
Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"It
is totally unacceptable that the government of Israel for 11 days did
not allow search and rescue teams to come. This is morally
repugnant," said Roed-Larsen, the UN Special Coordinator for the
occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel
declared the camp - which it alleged was a hotbed of Palestinian
resistance - a closed military zone when it invaded it on April 3, and
refused to allow aid groups or media in afterwards, except for small
groups accompanied by the occupation army.
It
said that unexploded bombs and booby traps made it too dangerous to
allow anyone in. Larsen denounced that argument, saying Israel could
have allowed in international experts to help clear the area and
search for possible survivors trapped in the rubble.
"That
is no excuse," he said. "I am watching two brothers pull
their father from the ruins, the stench of death is horrible. We're
seeing a 12-year-old boy being dug out, totally burned.
“We
have expert people here who have been in war zones and earthquake and
they say they have never seen anything like it," he said.
Larsen
said the top priority was to bring in search-and-rescue teams, which
he said, were already on the way but had not yet arrived. The only
rescue efforts currently underway were local residents digging through
the ruins of their homes and looking for survivors.
Larsen
said such efforts jeopardized the safety of the desperate diggers,
working close to buildings that were in danger of collapse.
He
said his organization would try to find out exactly what happened in
the weeklong Israeli military offensive in the camp. The
Palestinians call the occupation army operation a "massacre"
which killed hundreds of people, some of them executed after
surrendering.
Human
rights groups protested Wednesday, April 17, at the lack of rescue
efforts in the Jenin refugee camp amid claims that a family buried for
several days in the rubble had pleaded for help by phone, the British
daily The Guardian reported.
"It
is shocking that the [Israeli] authorities have not asked for help and
that the international community is not offering it," Amnesty
International said. "Help is needed now to save what life there
is left."
Speaking
from inside the ruined camp, Amnesty representative Javier Zuniga
said: "This is one of the worst scenes of devastation I have ever
witnessed. There is a real possibility that people are still alive
under the rubble of their former homes."
Amnesty
said that although it was contacted by a local human rights group that
had received a call from a family of 10 trapped underground and asking
for help, there was still no concerted effort to search for and rescue
survivors.
Law,
a Palestinian human rights group, said that three lawyers managed to
visit the Jenin government hospital after being turned away by a
soldier who refused to identify himself or his commander. While
waiting to enter, the lawyers said they had seen soldiers at a
checkpoint obstructing ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent and
the UN, which were trying to reach the hospital, Law said.
Mary
Robinson, the UN human rights chief, urged Israel Wednesday to let her
travel there with a delayed fact-finding mission, citing "growing
concerns over recent events in Jenin".
The
UN Human Rights Commission wanted to investigate the violence, but
Israel has failed to respond.
Palestinians
dug five survivors from the rubble of the shattered refugee camp in
Jenin Thursday and said they had heard others crying out for help,
witnesses said. "We found five people, who were taken to Jenin
hospital in very bad state," resident Naim Awais said in the
camp.
"There
were two boys, a woman and two men," he said, adding that they
appeared to have suffered burns and other injuries. "I have heard
many people asking for help, but we can't do anything for them because
we have no equipment," he said, as camp residents clawed through
rubble with shovels and pickaxes.
Meanwhile,
Israel Radio reported Thursday morning that the Israeli occupation
army raided several villages in the West Bank and abducted
Palestinians. The Israeli occupation forces raided the village of
Sayda, northeast of Tulkarem, and as of Thursday morning were
operating there. Two Fatah Tanzim resistance activists were arrested,
one from Idnah, west of Nablus, and another from Bayt Ur al-Fawqa,
west of Ramallah.
Another
seventeen Palestinians, according to Israeli media reports, were also
abducted.
This
came as Jordanian Foreign Minister, Marwan Al-Muasher, arrived in the
West Bank Thursday for a meeting with Palestinian President Yasser
Arafat in his besieged Ramallah compound.
According
to Petra news agency, the foreign minister was accompanied by Dr.
Ashraf Al Kurdi, the special physician of the Palestinian president to
conduct medical checkups for Arafat.
Earlier
this year, Al Kurdi, a well-known neurologist, said Arafat was in need
of medical attention. Al Kurdi said the nearly five-month siege that
Arafat is under could affect his health considerably. Dr. Al Kurdi, a
former minister of health, said he was holding Israel responsible if
anything that happened to the Palestinian leader.
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