Mohammed Omer
Palestinians carry the body of five-year-oldHuman remains mix with debris following the latest Israeli
Ayoub al-Fayed who was killed the previous
night in a missile strike on the Bureij
refugee camp in Gaza, 16 February
2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)
assault Friday on Bureij camp in Gaza Strip. Early reports
listed nine dead and more than 50 injured.
A targeted leader was killed, but many
others were killed too.
"It's very hard for us to rescue, or even locate bodies beneath
the building," said a medical relief worker from the
local Bureij hospital.
Israel has not confirmed responsibility
for the missile attack by F-16 aircraft.
"This is a barbaric crime," said Dr. Hassan Khalaf, head
of the local al-Shifa hospital. "They bombed residential
areas where people were sleeping in their houses."
The attack apparently targeted the house of a top leader
of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic
Jihad party. The leader, Ayman al-Fayed, 42, was
reported killed, along with two of his children and his
wife. Other victims were from the Bureij camp.
Palestinian sources said seven houses were destroyed,
and about 100 others damaged. According to hospital
sources, many of the casualties were children under the
age of 12, and included a baby only a few months old.
Fire and ambulance crews continued to fight several
fires that erupted after the bombing.
In military language, the loss of civilian lives was
"collateral damage." And not for the first time.
In the assassination of Hamas leader Dr. Nabil Abu
Salmiya in July 2006, the Israeli air strike killed his
wife and eight other family members, and injured
many others, including neighbors.
"The Israeli occupation have lost their compasses,"
said Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Ahmed. "
Shelling a house in the middle of a residential
district, inevitably killing and injuring children and
women ... this is evidence of their failings."
Abu Ahmed said Israel will pay a
high price for the attack.
"This is an Israeli-made earthquake," said a Gaza resident.
"Palestinian resistance fighters should fire homemade
rockets, so Israelis suffer and feel what we are suffering
as a result of their rockets."
Anguished Bureij camp residents gathered outside the
local hospital, calling for justice. "It is a war crime to
bomb an entire neighborhood to kill just one person,"
said resident Abu Fuad.
The Israeli air strike came only hours after the visit
to Gaza by John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General
for humanitarian affairs. Holmes urged a re-opening of
Gaza's borders to relieve the suffering of 1.5 million civilians.
Holmes is the highest UN official to visit Gaza since
Hamas took control of the area on 14 June last year.
Following that the Israeli blockade was further tightened.
Holmes told reporters in Gaza City that the
long-imposed blockade "makes for a grim human and
humanitarian situation here in Gaza, which means that
people are not able to live with the basic dignity to
which they are entitled. I have been shocked by the
grim and miserable things I have seen and heard
about during the day."
Just days before the attack, Israel's interior minister
Meir Sheetrit told cabinet members that their forces
could pick a neighborhood in Gaza, give the inhabitants
24 hours to leave, and "wipe it out,"
according to the BBC.
But in this attack there was no warning, as the
Israeli military targeted the leader.
Mohammed Omer, The Electronic Intifada
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