Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Houses in a shocking state


Amnesty International

".....Today, we visited several families whose homes were taken over and used as military positions by Israeli soldiers during the three-week military campaign. In most cases, the families had fled or were expelled by the soldiers. In some cases, however, the soldiers prevented the families from leaving, using them as “human shields.”

In the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, members of the Sammouni family told us that 46 of them, mostly children, were held captive in their home for two days in early January......

Every single room in the house had been extensively vandalized. In the houses, we saw Israeli army supplies, sleeping bags, medical kits, empty boxes of munitions and spent cartridges of Israeli bullets, providing incontrovertible evidence of the soldiers’ stay in these houses.

Every one of these houses we visited was in a shocking state. All the rooms had been ransacked, with furniture overturned and/or smashed. The families’ clothing, documents and other personal items were strewn all over the floors and soiled and, in one case, urinated on. In one house in the Sayafa area in north Gaza, several cardboard boxes full of excrement were left in the house – although there was a functioning toilet which the soldiers could have used.

Walls were defaced with crude threats written in Hebrew, such as “next time it will hurt more” and, in one house, a drawing of a naked woman. As well, in every case, the soldiers had smashed holes in the outer walls of the houses to use as lookout and sniper positions......"

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