CASUALTIES: UN agencies voice concern over the Israeli air strike that killed 30 members of the Samouni family, writes Michael Jansenin Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabiin Gaza
"ABU SALAH died, his wife died. Abu Tawfiq died, his son died, his wife also died. Muhammad Ibrahim died, and his mother died. Ishaq died and Nasar died. The wife of Nael Samouni died. Many people died."
"There were maybe more than 25 people killed," said Ahmed Ibrahim Samouni (13), a Palestinian boy who was wounded in the leg and chest but survived the Israeli shelling of a house in north Gaza on January 4th.
UN agencies have expressed strong concern over reports that Israeli troops evacuated Palestinian civilians to the house in the Zeitoun neighbourhood south of Gaza City and then shelled it 24 hours later, killing 30 people from the Samouni family.
A daily summary of information on events in the Gaza Strip issued by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs cited testimony about "extensive destruction and many deaths" in this case.
Speaking to Reuters from his hospital bed in Gaza, the boy recounted how his family came to be herded into the building that was later targeted.
"We were asleep when the tanks and the planes struck, we all slept in one room," Ahmed said in a weak voice. "One shell hit our house. Thank God we were not hit.
"We ran out of the house and saw 15 men . . . they landed from helicopters on rooftops of buildings." Soldiers beat residents and forced them all into one house.
After it was hit the next day and his mother was among those killed, Ahmed kept his three younger brothers alive and tried to help injured adults lying among the dead. "There was no water, no bread, nothing to eat," he said.
Local Red Crescent rescue workers and a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) managed to reach the house on January 7th after being denied access by the Israeli military for what the Red Cross called an "unacceptable" period. The children were starving when help finally reached the place, the ICRC said.
They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses."
Testimony has also been collected by the Israeli human rights group, B'tSelem, from Meysa Fawzi al-Samouni (19), who is married with a nine-month-old daughter. She said that on the morning of January 4th, she, her husband, child and 12 members of his immediate family were ordered to leave their house by armed Israeli troops and marched on foot to the house of her father-in-law's brother, a short 20 metres away. They found another 20 people gathered there.
An hour later Israeli soldiers returned and took this group to a third house, where there were another 35 people. They had neither food nor drink. Early on January 5th, last Monday, when the area was quiet, three of the men decided to go and bring more members of the extended family to a house they believed would be safe.
At that moment, the building was struck by a missile which she believed was fired from an F-16 war plane. She threw herself over her baby to protect her from the blast. When the dust cleared, she found 20-30 people had been killed, including her husband and his parents.
She was lightly injured, her daughter had lost two fingers and thumb on her left hand.
After a second strike, she and her husband's brother fled to a nearby house where they found 40-50 Israeli soldiers and 30 Palestinians, seven of them blindfolded men.
The soldiers ordered the women and children to leave. The men stayed behind, possibly to be used, she believed, as "human shields". The women and children walked until they found an ambulance which took her and her daughter to Shifa hospital. The bodies of the dead remained in the bombed building until a Red Cross team reached it three days later. The team was permitted to go there on foot, without ambulances.
The Israeli military yesterday refused to comment on the report.
The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs described the incident as being "one of the gravest" since Israel began its offensive on December 27th.
The ICRC accused the Israeli army of creating "unacceptable" delays in permitting rescue efforts and observed that the "Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded."
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillai called for "credible and independent" investigations into violations of human rights during the conflict. - (Additional reporting from Reuters)