Palestinians
Vent Anger at Funeral of
13 Killed in Gaza Onslaught
Palestine Media Center
04 May, 2003
After Friday prayers in Gaza
City, some 50,000 angry Palestinians joined the funeral procession for
the thirteen victims of Thursdays deadly Israeli military onslaught
on the densely-populated al-Shujaiya neighborhood.
Among the twelve Palestinians
killed were a two-year-old child, two teenagers and a handicapped man,
medical sources said.
Many demonstrators shouted
Revenge, Revenge!! while others carried Hamas and Palestinian
flags and chanted anti-Israeli slogans.
On Thursday, IOF accompanied
by tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters stormed the al-Shujaiya neighborhood
and commenced intensive firing at passersby and residents homes.
Al-Shifa hospital identified
the Palestinian victims as Ameir Ayad, 2, Mohammed Dahdouh, 13, Ahmad
Ramadan Al-Tetir, 13, Mohammad Naim, 25, Abdullah Al-Omrani, 21,
Mohammed Abu Zareina, 30, Nasser Omer Helis, 36, Baker Husein
Muhaisin, 40, handicapped, Rami khadir saeid, 27, Mohammed Al-Gharably,
67, Yousif Khalid Abu Hein, 30, Mahmoud Khalid Abu Hein, 38, and Ayman
Khalid Abu Hein.
More than sixty were wounded;
of them three were admitted to the intensive care unit and four undergone
major operations, hospital sources said.
Local residents said that
Israeli tanks backed by helicopters raided the area after midnight and
besieged the house of Fadel Abu Hain.
Fadel Abu Hein, a prominent
child psychologist, said his four-story apartment building came under
intense fire.
We are sitting in full
darkness. Children are screaming. We are trying to calm them down, but
bullets are coming from all directions, he said.
Director of emergency services
at Shifa hospital confirmed that most of the killed were shot in the
head.
Israeli Occupation Forces
(IOF) took up positions on top of some houses, firing at residents
homes, and sounds of explosions and tanks shelling could be heard
from distance, witnesses said.
Seven IOF soldiers sustained
moderate wounds, Israeli sources said.
The Israeli onslaught was
seen as blow to peace hopes spawned the day before international diplomats
unveiled a long-awaited roadmap to ending the 31-month conflict.
The Gaza raid was launched
hours after US, UN, EU and Russian diplomats handed copies of the roadmap
to new Palestinian premier Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon.
The plan aims to achieve
peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians and a separate
Palestinian state by 2005, through an end to violence, an Israeli pullback
from the occupied Palestinian territory and a freeze on illegal Israeli
settlement activities.
Palestinian cabinet member
Saeb Erakat accused the Israeli government of trying to derail
the peace plan at its inception.
Israel has launched
its tanks into the Gaza Strip as a response to the roadmap, Erakat
told AFP.
An Israeli official who spoke
on condition of anonymity admitted that the raids timing did not
help create a climate conducive to the implementation of the plan.
Thats true, but
one could say the same about the terror attack in Tel Aviv. To tell
you that it's the best timing and so on, probably not. But it's not
related to the roadmap, he told AFP.
On Wednesday, US President
George W. Bush called on both parties to work with the United States,
other powers, and above all, directly with each other to immediately
end the violence and return to a path of peace.
Elderly Dies of Wounds,
British Cameraman Killed by IOF
Meanwhile, Israeli Occupation
Forces (IOF) killed a freelance British journalist Friday night in the
southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah.
Witnesses said that journalist
James Miller was filming a documentary on the Israeli occupation armys
house demolitions in Rafah when the Israeli tank opened fire at him
wounding him in the neck.
The Israeli occupation army
denied troops targeted Miller, saying their operation was
to uncover tunnels used by to smuggle in weapons from nearby Egypt.
Miller was the third foreigner
injured or killed in Rafah in recent weeks.
Earlier, US peace activist
Rachel Corrie, 23, died March 16 in Rafah when an Israeli bulldozer
she was trying to block from demolishing a Palestinian house ran her
over.
On April 11, British peace
activist Tom Hurndall, 21, was shot in the head at the Rafah refugee
camp. He is in a coma.
Witnesses said an Israeli
soldier shot Hurndall in a military watchtower as he stooped to pick
up a Palestinian girl and carry her to safety.
Corrie and Hurndall were
members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which a group
of international peace activist protesting against Israeli illegal acts
of aggression in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Also in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian
medical sources said that a Palestinian elderly died in hospital in
the Gaza city where he was being treated for severe wounds, which he
sustained during the IOF invasion of the Jabalya refugee camp on 11
April.
Medical sources identified
the victim as Awad al-Saifi, 52.