|
Deir Al-Balah Morgue, The Scene Of Grim Reconstitutions Following Blast
AL-BUREIJ REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, March 16 (News Agencies) - Mutilated bodies are all that remain of a Palestinian woman and four young people killed, when their donkey cart was destroyed by a mysterious blast, which Palestinians say was an Israeli landmine explosion, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
At Deir Al-Balah hospital, doctors were trying to piece together the remains of the five dead before their burial.
The victims were blown to bits Friday, as Palestinian security sources say the cart hit an Israeli landmine in the Al-Bureij area of the central Gaza Strip. The Israeli army, however, has denied the charge.
The landmine was "a bomb left by Palestinians to injure Israeli troops as they left the area in their armoured vehicles," an Israeli army spokesman claimed.
Zina al-Awawida, 43, her three children aged eight to 16 and her six-year-old nephew Khaled al-Awawida had been going to visit relatives, as they did every Friday when tragedy struck.
The only one to escape was Ibrahim, 14. He stares incredulously at the red door of the morgue, behind which lie the remains of his mother, his two sisters, his brother and his cousin.
The boy was saved from certain death because he had only quarrelled with his mother earlier in the day.
"We had an argument because I didn't want to go to my uncle's and she scolded me, and told me to get off the cart and to go back home on foot," he said.
"I was going away when I heard a big explosion and saw dust flying up."
The blast was so loud that he temporarily lost his hearing, which is now gradually coming back.
Ibrahim, whose father died four years ago, said he ran to the nearby home of an uncle, who prevented him from going back to the scene.
"We were trying to find all the parts of the bodies," said the boy's uncle Ahmed al-Awawida, adding "but Israeli soldiers were shooting over our heads, so we could only search a patch of ground hidden behind some trees."
A moment later, holding a black plastic bag, the uncle knocks on the red door of the morgue, saying: "Here's some more pieces."
The director of the hospital, Ahmed Rabah, said he has "never witnessed a scene of such horror" since he qualified in 1966, despite having practised as a doctor during the Arab-Israeli conflicts between 1967 and 1973.
The cause of the explosion that killed the family is still in dispute. Soon after the blast, Palestinian security sources said the family's cart had struck an Israeli landmine.
However, doctors and witnesses believe the five were killed by a shell fired from an Israeli tank nearby.
"The lower part of the bodies are intact while the upper parts were hit. A mine or a bomb on the ground would have had the opposite effect," said Rabah.
General Abdel Razeq al-Majaida, Palestinian public security chief for the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, blamed the "new massacre" on the Israeli army.
"The forces of occupation committed a new massacre of Palestinian civilians ... by planting mines near a Palestinian security post, from which they withdrew this morning," he said Friday.
The blast came hours after the Israeli army pulled out of Al-Bureij refugee camp, as well as a number of towns and cities in the West Bank, following its largest series of military operations in the Palestinian territories since the 1967 Middle East war.
|
