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Israeli troops killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and injured thousands in 22 days of deadly attacks in Gaza in January |
CAIRO – Holding the photo of his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Salah Samouni’s eyes are filled with tears.
“My daughter Azza, my only daughter…was injured in the first hit on the house,” Salah told Haaretz on Sunday, October 18.
“She managed to say, ‘Daddy, it hurts.’ And then, in the second hit, she died.”
Salah’s child was among 21 of his family members killed in a deadly Israeli attack on his house in Gaza City neighborhood of Zaytoun earlier this year.
The bereaved Gazan recalls the moment when three Israeli shells hit his house on January 5.
“Everything is dust and I can't see anything,” he recalled. “I thought I was dead. I found myself getting up, all bloody.
Salah ran hysterically in search for his family members
“I found my mother sitting by the hall with her head tilted downward,” he said.
“I moved her face a little, and I found that the right half of her face was gone.
“I looked at my father, whose eye was gone. He was still breathing a little, and then he stopped."
Israeli troops killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and injured thousands in 22 days of deadly attacks in Gaza in January.
The onslaught wrecked havoc on the Gaza infrastructure, destroying thousands of homes and buildings across the impoverished territory.
A report by international investigator Richard Goldstone has accused Israel of committing war crimes during its deadly onslaught in Gaza.
“Why They Did This”
Despite the deadly attacks in the Zaytoun neighbourhood, the Israeli army banned the Red Cross and Red Crescent crews from entering the area.
The teams were only allowed after Israel halted the assault on January 18. Then the horrible situation on the ground was discovered.
The house of Wael Samouni, a brother of Salah, was found in ruins. The Israeli army demolished it with the corpses inside.
"I asked [Richard] Goldstone to find out just one thing: Why did the army do this to us?” Salah recalled, telling the UN investigator during his visit to Gaza.
“Why did they take us out of the house one at a time, and the officer who spoke Hebrew with my father verified that we were all civilians - [so] why did they then shell us, kill us? This is what we want to know."
Like thousands of Gazans who lost their beloved in the Israeli assault, Salah is still traumatized.
"We feel [we are] in an exile, even though we are in our homeland, on our land,” he said.
“We sit and envy the dead. They are the ones who are at rest."
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