Five young sisters are killed in Israeli air strike on mosque
A relative raises up the body of Dena Balosha (4) as mourners look on during her funeral amid the ruins of the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday. Palestinian medics said five young sisters, one of them Dena, died in an Israeli air strike
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Tuesday December 30 2008
Inside the mourning tent in Jabalya refugee camp, a group of men sat in stricken silence as they sought to comfort Anwar Balosha.
Hours earlier, five of his daughters had been killed by an Israeli air strike. Apache helicopter gunships fired missiles at a mosque in Jabalya in the early hours yesterday. The blast destroyed Mr Balosha's home beside the mosque.
Of his nine children, four escaped. But the strikes killed Dena (4), Samar (6), Jawaher (8) Akram, (14), and Tahrir (17), who were all crushed as they slept.
"Where is respect for our lives?" asked Mr Balosha. "They are killing us and no one is stopping it."
In all, five missiles were fired into Jabalya before dawn. Most hit empty buildings, although one attack wounded a young boy, and a middle aged man and woman. At Gaza's Islamic University, bombed at around midnight on Sunday, the destruction was total. A five-storey building, with administration, engineering and science departments, had been reduced to a pile of smouldering rubble.
Torn textbooks lay amongst slabs of concrete, twisted wires and shattered glass. The university's destruction happened during the final exams of its students -- which they might now be unable to complete.
Elsewhere, two Apache gunships fired missiles at a paint factory on Jaffa Street and a steel works in Abu Shebak Street.
All night, unmanned Israeli drones circled overhead. Generally used for reconnaissance to identify targets for attack, but some of these aircraft can fire missiles. Maysara Mohammed Adwan, a mother of 10 children, and Ibrahim Shafiq Chebat, a 24-year-old man, were killed by a drone two days ago in the town of Beit Hanoun.
Yesterday, a mosque opposite Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City lay in ruins. Local journalists say a doctor and a passer-by were killed.
The blast broke windows, downed power lines serving Shifa Hospital and blew out the windows and wrecked the interiors of adjoining shops and a kindergarten.
Local hospitals, including Al-Shifa, have been overwhelmed by the flood of casualties. Their wards are filled with people suffering head, facial and spinal injuries, mostly caused by flying shrapnel.
One baby girl suffered shrapnel injuries to her face and leg while another woman was brought in with multiple injuries she sustained in a blast as she sat in her office -- a charity based near a police station.
Gaza's hospitals are short of basic medical supplies and kept alive by electricity generators, many of which lack spare parts that the Israeli blockade has not permitted to enter.
People in Gaza fear the worst is still to come. Drones continue to whine overhead and many expect a ground attack by Israeli troops. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
- Ewa Jasiewicz in Gaza
