Livewire – Amnesty International blogging for human rights

Amnesty International mission delegates examine shrapnel marks in Khuza'a, Gaza, 24th January 2009 ©Amnesty International

Saturday 24 January: Nearly a week after the ceasefire, there are small signs of Gaza struggling to get back on its feet after the three-week trauma of the conflict. UN schools reopened today and there are long queues at the ATMs that have cash.

On a cold and misty morning, we travelled to the south-east of the Gaza Strip, to the town of Khuza’a, east of Khan Younis, only a stone’s throw from the fence that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel.
The Khan Younis area was less affected than some of the places in the north, where we have been working in the past week, but the patterns are all too similar:

• extensive use of artillery and white phosphorus in residential areas – which predictably caused death and injury to civilians and
• large-scale destruction of civilian homes and agricultural land – seemingly for the purpose of expanding the no-go area along Gaza’s eastern perimeter.

Things took a turn for the worse on 10 January, when Israeli air strikes and shelling began in earnest in the area. We found evidence of widespread use of artillery; the area is littered with 155mm white phosphorus carrier shells and we examined pieces from more than a dozen of them.

Several of these caused damage to homes and, in at least one case, produced a fatal injury. Lumps of smoking phosphorus felt wedges could still be seen lying in the streets.

The head of the hospital in Khan Younis told us that after the heavy bombardment of Khuza’a 100 people were admitted to hospital in 10 minutes suffering from shrapnel wounds, phosphorus burns and breathing difficulties. Doctors and nurses were overwhelmed.

We met the family of Hanan Fathi al-Najjar, a 41-year-old mother of four young children. On 10 January, she was hit in the chest by a large piece of shrapnel from a phosphorus shell that crashed through the roof of her house and then through an inside wall. She was killed instantly and two of her children and other relatives were injured. Her seven-year-old daughter Aya today stood in the yard of the house, her broken arm in a cast.

Her cousin Ihsan, aged 26, was injured in her right eye. She described to us how her eye felt as though a fire was burning through it. Hanan and her family had left their home, located further to the east, because the Israeli army had dropped leaflets warning residents to leave the area, and had been staying with relatives in the town. Her husband said: “We did what we were told to do and left our home in order to be safe.”

On 11, 12 and 13 January, Israeli forces operating in and around the town shelled homes, including with white phosphorus, and bulldozed houses and orchards. As we were sifting through ashes and debris in a burnt-out house, we came across the remnants of two exploded hand grenades and army-type webbing, evidence that members of Palestinian armed groups had been there.