Refugees flee camp with reports of Israeli abuses
"Doctors in Jenin say 15 babies were sick after their mothers fed
them powdered milk and sewage run-off from streets where
bodies were left to rot for days."
Suzanne Goldenberg in Jenin
Friday April 12, 2002
The Guardian
An exodus was under way yesterday from the refugee camp that
endured the bloodiest battle of Israel's military offensive, with
Palestinians bearing horrifying accounts of a systematic
campaign of destruction and abuse.
Hundreds of Palestinians fled the camp yesterday, an empty,
smoking ruin resounding to bursts of Israeli machine gun fire.
They left behind entire neighbourhoods flattened to make way for
Israeli armour.
Some of the wrecking missions were launched while women and
children were inside their homes. The operation began with
rocketing from helicopter gunships and bulldozers moved in to
finish the job.
They also told of the use of human shields for Israeli army
patrols, and the random strafing of heavily populated civilian
areas, killing elderly women and young boys and girls.
Those fleeing were dirty, exhausted and desperately hungry.
Doctors in Jenin say 15 babies were sick after their mothers fed
them powdered milk and sewage run-off from streets where
bodies were left to rot for days.
A few also claimed to have witnessed a summary execution and
the dumping of the dead - at least 150 Palestinians were killed
in the camp by the Israeli army count - into mass graves.
The stories of executions and disposal of the dead could not be
verified as the Israeli army has encircled the camp with tanks,
and shot at, or arrested, journalists approaching the area. The
Guardian was among a handful of newspapers whose reporters
managed to enter the town yesterday.
But the accounts of the massive destruction of civilian homes,
and of the firing on civilians, could be confirmed as they also
occurred in the town of Jenin, suggesting a widespread and
systematic pattern of human rights abuses that is only now
beginning to emerge.
Ali Mustafa Abu Siria, 43, an Arabic teacher, was carried to
hospital on a ladder - nursing a gunshot wound to the left knee
that had gone untreated for four days. Doctors said it was badly
infected.
He was injured while serving as a human shield for an Israeli
army patrol, who led him out of his home handcuffed and at
gunpoint on Friday. He was forced to walk ahead of the troops -
and the army sniffer dogs - as they underwent the perilous
business of house-to-house searches, hunting down Palestinian
militants and weapons caches.
Mr Abu Siria was shot at the 12th house. "As soon as I knocked
on the door, a bullet was fired at me, he said. He believes he
was shot by a second Israeli army patrol, which was on the first
floor of a neighbouring house. "The two groups of soldiers
started screaming at each other," he said. "Then they left me. I
started dragging myself on the ground until I reached the house
of a neighbour. The army did not do anything for me."
A similar picture of a widespread disregard for civilian casualties
by the Israeli army is also emerging in Jenin city. Doctors at
al-Razi hospital said a man bled to death on its doorstep after
soldiers prevented medics from retrieving his body.
A burst of machine-gun fire from a helicopter gunship in a
residential neighbourhood of Jenin on Wednesday killed a young
man, who was outside charging up his mobile phone on a car
battery, and injured Rina Zaid, 15, in the chest.
All but one ambulance driver from Jenin's general hospital has
been arrested by the Israeli army, so her family ripped a door off
its hinges and carried her to hospital on foot.
At dusk last night, the refugee camp was hit by 10 explosions in
the space of an hour - a parting act of destruction as the Israeli
army "mops up" what it calls an infrastructure of terror operating
from inside.
A new wave of refugees streamed out of the camp - including
many children - scavenging for food. A few hours earlier, Riyad
Ghalib Damaj, 28, a produce seller, also smuggled himself out
with a group of women and children fleeing the camp, taking
advantage of a brief lifting of the curfew in Jenin.
"There are no houses left in the refugee camp; there is only a
highway. There are countless numbers of houses destroyed. If
you saw them you would go crazy," he said.
"So many rockets were fired on our house from helicopters
because three soldiers were killed nearby, and there are only
two families left in the neighbourhood."
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