MANY DIE WITH TARGETED LEADER
by Mohammed Omer

Inter Press Service
February 17, 2008

GAZA CITY - Human remains mix with debris following the latest Israeli
assault Friday on Bureij Camp in Gaza Strip. Early reports listed
nine dead and more than 50 injured.A targeted leader was killed,
but many others were killed too.

"It's very hard for us to rescue, or even locate bodies beneath the
building," said a medical relief worker from the local Bureij hospital.

Israel has not confirmed responsibility for the missile attack by
F-16 aircraft.

"This is a barbaric crime," said Dr. Hassan Khalaf, head of the local
al-Shifa hospital. "They bombed residential areas where people were
sleeping in their houses."

The attack apparently targeted the house of a top leader of the
al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad party. The
leader, Ayman al-Fayed, 42, was reported killed, along with two of
his children and his wife.

Other victims were from the Bureij camp.

Palestinian sources said seven houses were destroyed, and about 100
others damaged. According to hospital sources, many of the casualties
were children under the age of 12, and included a baby only a few
months old.

Fire and ambulance crews continued to fight several fires that erupted
after the bombing.

In military language, the loss of civilian lives was "collateral
damage".

And not for the first time.

In the assassination of Hamas leader Dr. Nabil Abu Salmiya in July
2006, the Israeli air strike killed his wife and eight other family
members, and injured many others, including neighbours.

"The Israeli occupation have lost their compasses," said Islamic Jihad
spokesman Abu Ahmed. "Shelling a house in the middle of a residential
district, inevitably killing and injuring children and women…this
is evidence of their failings."

Abu Ahmed said Israel will pay a high price for the attack.

"This is an Israeli-made earthquake," said a Gaza
resident. "Palestinian resistance fighters should fire home-made
rockets, so Israelis suffer and feel what we are suffering as a result
of their rockets."

Anguished Bureij Camp residents gathered outside the local hospital,
calling for justice. "It is a war crime to bomb an entire neighbourhood
to kill just one person," said resident Abu Fuad.

The Israeli air strike came only hours after the visit to Gaza by John
Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs. Holmes
urged a re-opening of Gaza's borders to relieve the suffering of 1.5
million civilians.

Holmes is the highest UN official to visit Gaza since Hamas took
control of the area Jun. 14 last year. Following that the Israeli
blockade was further tightened.

Holmes told reporters in Gaza City that the long-imposed blockade
"makes for a grim human and humanitarian situation here in Gaza,
which means that people are not able to live with the basic dignity to
which they are entitled. I have been shocked by the grim and miserable
things I have seen and heard about during the day."

Just days before the attack, Israel's interior minister Meir Sheetrit
told cabinet members that their forces could pick a neighbourhood
in Gaza, give the inhabitants 24 hours to leave, and "wipe it out",
according to the BBC.

But in this attack there was no warning, as the Israeli military
targeted the leader.