FAMILIES SCRABBLE IN THE DUST TO FIND THEIR DEAD
By Justin Huggler, The Independent (UK), 4/19/02
news.independent.co.uk
WHEN THEY found the body it was in pieces and so they gathered it all up
out of the rubble, great chunks of blackened, rotting flesh with bits of
bone sticking out, and piled them up on a blanket. The smell made us retch
and stumble away gasping for clean air. The Palestinians said the pile of
putrefying flesh and bone was Mohammed Massoud Abu Sb'a.
The people of Jenin refugee camp returned to look for their dead yesterday
amid the devastation that the Israeli army had made of their homes. The
destruction here was more devastating than an earthquake, yet the Israelis
have not allowed any heavy lifting equipment in here, so the Palestinians
dug out the bodies with their hands, scrabbling in the dust and heaving
away the broken blocks. They had brought a stretcher for the body we saw
being dug up but a stretcher was not needed for fragments so they bundled
them all up in a blanket and carried them away.
Aid workers and human rights monitors have started to call this ground
zero. The television pictures do not convey the devastation. You have to
come here to walk over the dust and rubble that used to be people's homes,
picking your way through the little pieces of their lives, the children's
schoolbooks and discarded clothing. You have to smell the stench of death
that clings to certain corners. The piles of rubble tower high above your
head and the work of removing the bodies is nerve-racking and haunting...
Another woman stopped us angrily outside the hospital. She was saying
something had happened to her sister, but would not explain what. "See what
Sharon has done to us," she said hysterically. "America is with Sharon,
Britain is with Sharon." |
