A single rifle bullet, another victim - but no hope of a doctor
Rory McCarthy in Jabalia
The Guardian, Monday March 3 2008
"First came an explosion in the street outside. Then the sound of a single rifle bullet slicing through the sky in a sharp crack and into the apartment directly above the home of Raed Abu Saif, the same apartment into which his young daughter Safa had just gone. It was Saturday afternoon, about 4pm.
Abu Saif hurried upstairs and found, lying on the floor of the front room, Safa, aged 12. There was a hole in her chest where the bullet had entered and a hole in her back where it had exited. It took her three hours to die.
Outside in the district of Zimmo Square, at the eastern edge of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip, there was by now a heavy Israeli military presence, with tanks and troops and the sound of fighting raging. It was too dangerous for ambulances to reach the apartment and too dangerous for Abu Saif to head out on foot with his daughter. Instead, he fetched bandages, closed the wounds as best he could and held her in his arms as she bled.
"She said she was in pain, that she couldn't breathe," he said. "A few minutes before she died she told me to stop squeezing the wound, she couldn't breathe. I was just touching her hair. Then I saw her eyes roll up. I felt her heart. It was not beating."...."
No comments:
Post a Comment