"I was sleeping with my sisters and suddenly I woke up," Reem Baloosha, 13, told me, describing the night two days ago when her five sisters were killed in an Israeli air strike.
"I found myself under the rubble, the stones were crushing me. I looked around, my sister was under the rubble, she was dead."
I visited the family in Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The whole house is a pile of rubble. There is nothing but dust and stones, with a few girls' clothes and school books.
The parents do not even have photos of their dead daughters, all their pictures were lost under the rubble.
Their father, Anwar, was sitting in a mourning tent. Their mother is in total shock. She is barely conscious. They seem to be too shocked even to cry.
A destroyed building in Jabaliya camp, 29 December 2008
Buildings were reduced to rubble in the Jabaliya camp
"If they were making rockets, I wouldn't be sad like this, but they were waiting for electricity, to study for their exams. I have eight daughters, five of them have been killed," Mr Baloosha told me.
People in Shifa hospital in Gaza City are in real misery too.
There are lots of young people who are injured, people who have lost parts of their arms or legs, or who are hooked up to drips and tubes and cannot be moved from intensive care.
Hundreds of people are coming to visit their relatives. Some of them stay in the hospital overnight, sleeping on the floor, or on chairs, or they just don't sleep.
If you look at their eyes, you can see they haven't slept for days.
Last night it was really cold, and there was heavy rain in Gaza City. Some of the hospital windows were damaged and have been covered with plastic, sheets or just left open.
There is no heating. The staff just cover the patients with sheets and blankets.
No comments:
Post a Comment