Just some further proof, if more was needed, of acts of kindness from the most democratic Middle Eastern nation.
Fourteen die after Israelis launch missile into crowd, Justin Huggler in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip
The Independent, 08 October 2002
Fourteen Palestinians were killed yesterday on a day when an Israeli helicopter fired a rocket into a crowd in Khan Younis that included women and children. As the wounded were arriving in hospital, Israeli guns opened up on the hospital, killing one man and wounding three others.
And within hours, four more Palestinians were dead after fighting between Hamas militants and Palestinian security forces loyal to Yasser Arafat flared. Palestinian police last night held 60 Hamas gunmen under siege in Nusseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Onlookers were attacking the police with stones.
The violence between Hamas and Palestinian Authority security forces began after a senior Palestinian police commander was kidnapped and killed by 13 Hamas gunmen yesterday. Hamas leaders said the killing was part of a private blood feud and had nothing to do with the organisation. The Palestinian Authority accused Hamas of being behind it.
In the helicopter attack, Palestinians said troops fired a rocket unprovoked at a crowd that had come out of their houses in Khan Younis, thinking one Israeli raid was over. The Israelis said Palestinian gunmen shot at them as they retreated, and they were returning fire. The Palestinians said the dead were civilians; the Israeli army said all but one were militants.
It was the heaviest death toll in an Israeli raid for months, just as Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, flew in to talk peace. The US state department stepped up its criti cism of Israel, saying Washington was “deeply troubled” by the raids.
The trouble began with the sort of incursion that happens regularly in the Gaza Strip. Tanks swept into the town of Khan Younis, and Israeli soldiers searched houses, apparently looking for militants. Then, it seems, they left, and 15 minutes late,r the helicopter rocket ploughed into the unsuspecting crowd.
There were women and children there, who were taken to Nasser hospital, which itself came under Israeli fire early yesterday, as it was thronged with emergency cases. The Israeli army said the gunshots were not aimed at the hospital but at mortar fire from nearby.
But the Israeli soldiers must have known they were firing in the direction of a hospital. Mohammed abu Shaluli, who worked there, died from a bullet in the head.
In an upstairs ward,10-year-old Fawzi Aqqa was lying in shock, a metal brace newly wired into his shattered leg. His mother, Sheida al-Fara, described what had happened.
"After midnight, the Israelis came to our house. I went and opened the door. They were looking for something, I don’t know what. Then they left the house, around 2am.
“They took my husband’s ID, they took them from all the men in the house. After the Israelis left, all the men went to look for their IDs. My son followed his father. I was standing on the balcony with my daughter. I saw a light in the sky, and suddenly, there was a big explosion. I heard my son saying, ‘I don’t want to die’. I went to help. When I saw my son, his leg was covered with blood.”
Mrs al-Fara said there were many armed men in the crowd, some of them militants, some legitimately armed members of the Palestinian police, which still operates in Gaza. “No one was shooting at the Israelis.” She added that they were shooting in the air to celebrate the Israeli soldiers leaving.
Nine-year-old Yusra Astal was also in the crowd. She was hit in the hip. Her 17-year-old brother Ahmad was killed, and a second brother, Mohammed, who is 24, was also wounded.
“I left my house because we believed the Israelis had left,” Yusra told me. She said men in the crowd were firing guns but she did not know what they were shooting at.
Twelve-year-old Hassan Astal, a distant relative, was in the opposite bed. He, too, was hit in the leg by shrapnel. He said there were many children in the crowd. We found Khadiye Wafi, a 17-year-old girl, in another ward. She and her mother Bashira were in the crowd and both were wounded.
She said there were only a few women there, but many children. She said some of the men had thrown pipe bombs into the street to make sure the Israeli soldiers had left but
had not attacked the Israelis.
Of the dead, the youngest was 17. One woman, Rahima Salaami, was 50. The rest of the dead were men. More than 100 people were wounded. The Israeli army said yesterday it had film of the rocket attack, taken by a pilotless drone flying over Khan Younis, but it had not yet decided whether they should release it.