Ravings From The Bog

Israeli Zionists continue to slaughter Palestinian civilians along with Hamas freedom fighters – this report from the BBC:

BBC journalist and Gaza resident Hamada Abu Qammar describes the impact of the current wave of Israeli airstrikes against Hamas targets.

The streets of Gaza are deserted, apart from a few cars taking urgent cases to hospital and families screaming and shouting as they take bodies to the cemetery to be buried.

This morning I visited Shifa Hospital, the main one in Gaza.

I spoke to one man, a civilian, and also a 14-year-old boy who were injured in an airstrike on a police station in the east of Gaza City this morning.

The man said he had been going to work in a clinic when he heard the sound of planes and turned back. But after that he cannot remember what happened – he just woke up injured, with wounds in his hand, leg and stomach.

The teenage boy had blood on his head and was in a lot of pain. He could not even remember his own name. “I don’t even know where I am,” he said to me.

I saw a body too, in the emergency room, with a stick of wood stuck through the chest.

Yesterday I also went into the hospital; the morgue was full and bodies were left in the streets. Parents were scouring the hospital for their children.

I followed one woman who was screaming “my son, my son” as she searched the building.

Eventually they located him, a young man was in his twenties. The staff would not let her see the body, but I saw it. It didn’t have a head and there was no stomach. She fainted on top of the remains of her son, which were covered with a white sheet.

The relatives in the hospital scream and scream. They don’t have words to express their feelings, they just say “God help us”, over and over.

I have seen several Israeli airstrikes this morning – one on a Hamas police post on the coastal road, another on a house about 200m from the BBC office. Smoke pours into the sky. The largest so far today was on the Hamas security headquarters, which is also near to our office, a few hundred metres away.

I was watching it from the window. There were three very loud bangs and a power cut. I could hear women screaming in their houses, and gunshots from Hamas men surrounding the area to keep people way.

The compound was in a big residential area, with lots of high buildings and apartments. Some of the homes are only about 5m from the site – and of course those buildings were damaged, with windows shattered and falling to the ground.

Electricity comes and goes as usual. Most shops are closed. There is a lack of everything – the UN relief agency UNRWA has not been able to deliver food aid for about 750,000 people.

There are shortages of anaesthetic gas, medical supplies, flour and milk – but many of the people I have spoken to say they don’t feel like eating while this is going on.

Families are just sitting in their homes. I spoke to one of my neighbours, Iman, a 14-year-old-girl. She was so scared she could barely speak.

“I don’t know where to go. I don’t know where is a safe place to stay. We don’t know when they will strike again,” she said.

Israel is not currently permitting international journalists to cross into Gaza