THE SITUATION in the Gaza Strip was unsettled yesterday in spite of Israel’s unilateral ceasefire and Hamas’s declaration of a conditional week-long truce. Israeli F-16s struck a house and tanks engaged fighters in northern Gaza after Palestinian fighters fired rockets into southern Israel.
At Beit Hannoun, a farmer was killed and his son injured when inspecting their fields and a woman and her daughter were wounded when their home was hit by an Israeli shell.
Phosphorus munitions hit al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza city. The 23-day death toll rose to about 1,300, including 410 children, with 5,450 wounded. The fatality figure is certain to increase as bodies are recovered.
Hospitals remained under severe pressure although a group of 40 doctors entered from Egypt on Saturday. A few critically wounded Palestinians left the Strip through the southern Rafah crossing for treatment in hospitals in Egypt which was insisting that only its ambulances could make the transfer. At the Erez crossing in the north Israel reportedly opened a field hospital to treat the wounded.
Irish volunteer Caoimhe Butterly was with the Palestinian Red Crescent in the northern Jabaliya area, the site of heavy fighting, where she helped recover bodies. “Thirty-eight were brought to the Kamal Adwan hospital in the morning,” she said. Palestinian health officials put the total for this area at 95; 20 were believed to be of guerrillas killed fighting.
Australian volunteer Sharon Locke took part in the Red Crescent effort to extract 27 bodies through a hole in the roof of a house in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza city where Israeli troops had rounded up 70 members of the Sammouni family on January 4th.
Twenty-four hours later the house received direct hits from Israeli bombs. Ms Locke saw the corpses of four women extracted before the Red Cross warned ambulance crews and local people that they should flee because Israeli tanks were advancing. Later rescuers returned and lifted out another 14 bodies. Heavy equipment had been brought in to do the job. “The whole area is crushed,” Ms Locke stated.
Salah Sakka, a former member of the Gaza city municipality, which serves 500,000 people, said: “Planes, drones and helicopters are overhead [creating tension]. Water and sanitation are a catastrophe. Water and sewage pipes have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people do not have tap water, 220,000 in Jabaliya alone.
“The power company’s lines are down, wires are in the streets [where] . . . debris of bombed buildings is scattered. Shops and offices along Omar Mukhtar Street [Gaza city’s main thoroughfare] have been smashed, particularly those near the government compound.”
Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said its work depended on whether Hamas halts rocket fire and Israel withdraws. Of the 100,000 displaced people, half are living in UNRWA schools. Before the agency can resume normal work, accommodation will have to be found for the displaced. While looking after them, UNRWA has to carry on with food distribution, and repair or replace 53 damaged or destroyed schools and other facilities.
Israel has rejected accusations by human rights experts and agencies, including, on Saturday, Human Rights Watch, that it has committed war crimes by attacking densely populated urban areas with a variety of highly destructive and toxic munitions. UNRWA’s Gaza operations chief, Irish national John Ging, asked: “Were they war crimes that resulted in the deaths of the innocent during the conflict? The question has to be answered.”