'No
Hezbollah Rockets
Fired From Qana'
By Dahr Jamail
03 August, 2006
Inter
Press Service
QANA, Aug 1 (IPS)
- Red Cross workers and residents of Qana, where Israeli bombing killed
at least 60 civilians, have told IPS that no Hezbollah rockets were
launched from the city before the Israeli air strike.
The Israeli military has
said it bombed the building in which several people had taken shelter,
more than half of them children, because the Army had faced rocket fire
from Qana. The Israeli military has said that Hezbollah was therefore
responsible for the deaths.
"There were no Hezbollah
rockets fired from here," 32-year-old Ali Abdel told IPS. "Anyone
in this village will tell you this, because it is the truth."
Abdel had taken shelter in
a nearby house when the shelter was bombed at 1 am. When the bombings
finally let up in the morning, he went back to the bombed shelter to
search for relatives.
He found his 70-year-old
father and 64-year-old mother both dead inside.
"They bombed it, and
afterwards I heard the screams of women, children, and a few men --
they were crying for help. But then one minute after the first bomb,
another bomb struck, and after this there was nothing but silence, and
the sound of more bombs around the village."
Masen Hashen, a 30-year-old
construction worker from Qana who lost several family members in the
air strike on the shelter, said there were no Hezbollah rockets fired
from his village. "Because if they had done that now, or in the
past, all of us would have left. Because we know we would be bombed."
Qana had been a shelter because
no rockets were being fired from there, survivors said. "When Hezbollah
fires their rockets, everyone runs away because they know an Israeli
bombardment will come soon," Abdel said. "That is why everyone
stayed in the shelter and nearby homes, because we all thought we'd
be all right since there were no Hezbollah fighters in Qana."
Lebanese Red Cross workers
in the nearby coastal city of Tyre told IPS that there was no basis
for Israeli claims that Hezbollah had launched rockets from Qana.
"We found no evidence
of Hezbollah fighters in Qana," Kassem Shaulan, a 28-year-old medic
and training manager for the Red Cross in Tyre told IPS at their headquarters.
"When we rescue people or recover bodies from villages, we usually
see rocket launchers or Hezbollah fighters if they are there, but in
Qana I can say that the village was 100 percent clear of either of those."
Another Red Cross worker,
32-year-old Mohammad Zatar, told IPS that "we can tell when Hezbollah
has been firing rockets from certain areas, because all of the people
run away, on foot if they have to."
While IPS was interviewing
people in Qana at the site of the shelter Monday, Israeli warplanes
roared overhead. Vibrations from nearby bombing rattled many buildings.
At least three villages in southern Lebanon were attacked in Israeli
air strikes Monday.
Following the international
outcry over the air strike, Israel declared a 48-hour cessation of air
strikes in order to carry out a military probe into the Qana killings.
Despite the false Israeli
statement that it was halting its air strikes, Israeli Justice Minister
Haim Ramon told Army Radio that the stoppage "does not signify
in any way the end to the war."
Israel has rejected mounting
international pressure to end the 20-day-old war against Hezbollah.
The United Nations has indefinitely postponed a meeting on a new peacekeeping
force for southern Lebanon.
While defending the Israeli
air strike on the civilians in Qana, Israel's ambassador to the United
Nations Dan Gillerman told the UN Security Council that Qana was "a
hub for Hezbollah", and said that Israel had urged villagers to
leave.
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister
Shimon Peres said in reply to questions in New York Monday that the
bombing was "totally, totally its (Hezbollah's) fault."