Gaza Families Live In The
Shadow Of Death
By Laila El-Haddad
in Gaza
10 October, 2004
Aljazeera
The
last thing that young Suha Ayub Ibayd remembers before a barrage of
tank fire ripped through her home is huddling together with her parents
and eight brothers and sisters.
They had taken cover
in the middle of their living-room floor hoping to find shelter from
the mass of military machines that had rumbled into their neighbourhood
minutes earlier on October 6.
Now she lies listlessly in her hospital bed, trying to absorb as well
as any nine-year-old could the events of that morning.
She survived with relatively light wounds. The same cannot be said,
however, about her younger sister, fighting for her life in the hospital's
intensive care unit, or about many of her neighbours.
One of them, 15-year-old Abd Allah Qahtan, died instantly in the pre-dawn
Israeli attack on civilian homes in the northern Gaza Strip of Bait
Lahya, while Hamdan Ubaid and his son Hamuda were killed on their way
to the mosque for morning prayers.
They are the latest victims in Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
bloody offensive through the northern Gaza Strip, which has claimed
more than 85 Palestinian lives, nearly 30 of them children.
The military operation
was launched after two Israeli children were killed on 29 September
in a Hamas rocket attack on Sderot, near the Gaza border.
"I saw two
or three tanks and several bulldozers razing farmland near our house,"
Ibayd's mother Somaya said, recounting a tale of shock and horror.
"We took cover
in the living room. Then out of nowhere the tanks shells hit us ...
all I remember after that is seeing smoke ... all I remember is smoke
and screams and ambulances."Somaya's
injured family members are spread out in hospitals across Jabalya.
Kamel Udwan Hospital
in Bait Lahya, where she is staying, is working five times its 60-bed
capacity, with hospital staff forced to turn the cafeteria into an outpatient
clinic.
Somaya's 18-month-old
daughter is under observation in Gaza's Shifa Hospital, with fragments
of shrapnel lodged in her head and guts. Doctors' predictions for her
survival are dismal.
Somaya hasn't spoken
to her since the attack on Wednesday morning, preoccupied instead with
attending to five-year-old Sabrin, who was lying by her side, wracked
by violent spasms of pain.
She too was hit
in the head, which was seeping blood and roughly bandaged with the limited
supplies available to the under-stocked hospital.
Across the room
was Sabrin's seven-year-old brother Alaa, whose face was badly burned
and whose frail young body was dotted with shrapnel wounds.
He stared blankly
at family members who tried futilely to elicit a response from him.
Alaa hadn't spoken a word since early in the morning, with a look of
fear frozen on his tender face.
"He's suffering
from complete shock," his aunt Badriah said. "He used to be
the most talkative one of the group."
Israeli military
sources said occupation troops only opened fire at civilian homes after
an anti-tank rocket was launched from one of the houses in the town.
But according to
Somaya, the attack was completely unprovoked - there were neither fighters
nor rockets in the area.
"It's a very
quiet area. The resistance fighters don't come here, and there was nothing
fired from our house. Absolutely nothing," Somaya said.
"They target
every living thing. They have no mercy in their hearts"
Badriah, aunt of
seven-year-old Alaa who was badly wounded in Israeli attack
Her family was lucky enough to live and tell their tale, which gives
further credence to Palestinian claims that Sharon's weeklong charge
through northern Gaza is more about inflicting as much damage and pain
as possible, than about protecting Israeli towns.
"They target
every living thing. They have no mercy in their hearts," Badria
said.
According to the
assistant director of the Kamal Udwan Hospital, Dr Said Joudeh, the
injuries he's seen have been the most extensive and penetrating in the
four years of the intifada.
"I've been
working here a long time, and I've seen some pretty horrible things
- but nothing like this, and not with this frequency," Dr Joudeh
said.
"People have
been arriving here with their bowels ripped inside out, with their limbs
torn off, their bodies burned beyond recognition, and dozens of bullet
fragments that exploded upon impact lodged mainly in the upper half
of their bodies.
"The injuries
are highly serious, with evidence of direct hits intended to cause as
much damage as possible.They are penetrating, crushing and destructive."
Badria's nine-year-old
son told her after seeing what happened to his cousins, he wants to
become a resistance fighter.
As for young Suha,
she says she dreams one day of becoming a doctor "so she can treat
injured people" like herself.
Her aunt is not
so hopeful. "She keeps saying she wants to become a medic. But
there is no room in our lives for dreams anymore."