Military shrapnel disfigures girl, kills 15 minors and 25 adults in the strip, in the latest offensive that Tel Aviv claims It is against militiamen
▲ Mourners carry the body of Palestinian Rasheed Mahmoud Sadah, 23, who was killed during an attack by Israeli settlers, during his funeral in the West Bank village of Jit, near Nablus.Photo Ap
AFP, AP and Reuters
The newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, August 17, 2024, p. 21
Hit. They came to burn, kill and destroysaid a resident of the village of Jit in the reoccupied West Bank yesterday, where Israeli settlers carried out a deadly raid the day before.
A settler attack on the settlement of Jit, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, killed a 23-year-old Palestinian and seriously wounded others on Thursday night, Palestinian health officials said.
Testimonies from other residents agree that at least 100 masked settlers entered the town, fired live ammunition, burned houses and cars and damaged tanker trucks. A video shows how the flames consume the small village which, according to the inhabitants, had to defend themselves without military help for two hours.
First they set fire to a house, then they came here, lit Molotov cocktails and threw them into the rooms.says Muawiya al Sada, who shows his living room and what remains of his sofa reduced to ashes.
Arman saw them arrive: About a hundred settlers emerged, all dressed alike, with knives and firearms.account.
State Terrorism
They set fire to my neighbors’ houses one by one and then headed toward ours. They burned other houses too. Later we heard that a young man was shot dead by them.he adds.
The (Israeli) army arrived laterSada points out.
For the Palestinian National Authority, the events constitute acts of organized state terrorism.
The Jit Wall and Colonization Resistance Commission indicates that Four houses and six cars were set on fire and accuses the Israeli army of protect the settlers and fire bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at the villagers.
The spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, said that it was an attack horrific and called cease this type of aggression.
Israeli security forces remain passive while attacks occur. There are even reports that weapons are being distributed to settlers. Clearly there is a state responsibility in this regard.he stressed.
The foreign ministers of the European Union, Josep Borrell; of France, Stephane Sejourne and David Lamy, of Great Britain, who were visiting Israel, joined the cascade of criticism about the attack, while the White House described it as unacceptable this violence.
Human rights groups said arrests over settler violence were rare, and prosecutions even rarer.
Meanwhile in Gaza, gravediggers, overwhelmed, pile up some graves on top of others and create spaces for the next dead from the strip. Before the war, we had one or two burials every week, five at the most. Nowadays, there are weeks when I bury 200 or 300 people, it’s unimaginable.confesses Saadi Hassan Barakeh, who leads the team of gravediggers at the Deir al Balah cemetery.
Meanwhile, in one of the few hospitals still functioning in the Palestinian territory, a mother tries to keep her 7-year-old daughter from seeing her own shrapnel wounds after an Israeli attack disfigured her head.
When little Sila asks her mother how she is, Um Sila tells her that she is beautiful. She is one of more than 92,000 Palestinians who, according to Gaza health authorities, have been injured in the more than 10 months of Israeli offensive.
Now I don’t want to talk to her about her situation, I don’t let her see anything because she’s pretty and God willing they are minor wounds that can heal and scar.says the mother.
The attack that wounded the girl, which Israel said targeted Hamas militants using the compound, killed at least 30 Palestinians, including 15 children and eight women, and wounded more than 100 people, according to the Gaza press office.
Before the war, Sila was outgoing and active, with a smile and a sense of humor that helped her siblings, according to her mother. Now she is different and terrified of school.
He tells me he doesn’t want to go to any schoolhis mother explains to the press.
Israel says it does everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. It has targeted several schools, alleging that Hamas militants and commanders were operating from them and using civilians as human shields, a charge the group denies. The United Nations Human Rights Office has recorded at least 21 attacks on schools under its management and others in Gaza since July 4 this year.