U.N. envoy says Jenin camp 'shocking and horrifying'
cnn.com
April 18, 2002 Posted: 11:08 AM EDT (1508 GMT)
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank (CNN) -- The United Nations envoy to the Middle East said Thursday the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp on the West Bank is "shocking and horrifying beyond belief," the air filled with the smell of decaying bodies.
"It looks as if an earthquake has hit the heart of the refugee camp here," said Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. envoy. "I've just been witnessing two brothers digging out of the rubble their father and five other family members. I witnessed a family digging out their about 12-year-old son from beneath the rubble. There's a stench of decaying corpses all over the place here, the scene is absolutely unbelievable."
Larsen said he had gone into the camp with representatives of the Palestine Red Crescent and the U.N. relief agency UNRWA.
"What we are seeing here is the large-scale suffering of the whole civilian population here. No military operation could justify the suffering we are seeing here," he said. "It's not only the corpses, children lacking food."
He said the Israel Defense Forces had lifted a curfew at midnight, allowing families into the heart of the camp for the first time where he said they were "digging to find loved ones."
Larsen called on the Israelis to give fuller access to the camp to aid agencies distributing food and water to the residents.
Palestinians have charged that as many as 500 Palestinians were killed in the fighting and called the battle at the camp a massacre. Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said fighting at the camp was fierce but said the number of deaths was in the "dozens not hundreds."
Asked if he saw any evidence of a massacre, Larsen would not comment.
There was a report early in the day that two boys, ages 6 and 12, had been pulled alive from beneath the rubble of their house at the camp. The Palestine Red Crescent and other rescue officials, however, said the boys were dead.
The Red Crescent said Palestinians had found five bodies in one grave about three kilometers from Jenin. They said the bodies had been recovered and taken to a hospital.
Israeli tanks and military vehicles were on the move in Jenin and Nablus, but whether they were pulling out or redeploying was unclear.
Ben-Eliezer said Wednesday night that Israeli troops would pull out of Jenin and Nablus by Sunday but were continuing operations for now.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered incursions into the West Bank to root out what he called "terrorist infrastructure." The Palestinians call the campaign that began March 29 an Israeli reoccupation of the West Bank. |
