Palestinian death toll hits more than 500

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Palestinian death toll hits more than 500

(Sunday 04 January 2009)



SLAUGHTER: A Palestinian man carrying a young injured boy after an airstrike.


PALESTINIAN civilians took refuge in their shattered homes on Sunday from the Israeli blitzkrieg that has now claimed more than 500 lives.

Israeli tanks and thousands of troops in brigade-sized formations rolled into the besieged Gaza Strip on Saturday night, preceded by artillery barrages from land and sea and major air raids.


Photojournalist Sameh Habeeb reported from inside the terrorised Palestinian territory that the Israeli occupiers were using artillery cluster shells, which burst in the air and scatter bomblets indiscriminately, for the first time.


By morning, the Israeli army had penetrated deep into the north of the tiny enclave, which is home to 1.5 million people and one of the most densely populated areas in the world, and had cut off Gaza City.


Black smoke billowed over the city of 400,000 at first light as bursts of machine gun fire rang out.


Gaza's residents cowered inside their homes, while terrified residents in other areas fled in fear.


Lubna Karam said that she and the other nine members of her family had spent the night huddled in the hallway of their Gaza City home.


The windows of the house were blown out days earlier in an Israeli airstrike and the family had been without electricity for a week, enduring the winter cold without heating and eating cold food.


She said that no-one had slept overnight.


"We keep hearing the sounds of aeroplanes and we don't know if we'll live until tomorrow or not," she said.


At least 31 more civilians and four resistance fighters were killed in the first 24 hours of the ground offensive. The number of injured brought to Gaza's medicine-starved hospitals rose to 2,500.


The dead included a 12-year-old girl, five members of a single family, eight civilians killed by a tank shell in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya and an ambulance driver.


One Israeli was killed and 30 wounded, two of them seriously.


The Israeli government claimed that the carnage and destruction was intended only to stop the sporadic rocket and mortar attacks, which have killed four Israelis, not to topple the elected Hamas government or to establish a miltary presence there.


A Hamas spokesman warned the Israeli army: "You entered like rats. Gaza will be a graveyard for you, God willing."


At mid-afternoon, the Interior Ministry said that it was still in control of Gaza and had captured residents collaborating with Israel along with traders exploiting the situation to inflate prices. A spokesman said: "The security forces are working, despite the shelling of its compounds. They are protecting the back of the resistance."

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