Five sisters killed in Gaza while they slept
Israel's target was the mosque next door. But the rocket attack
claimed the lives of innocent children
By Donald Macintyre and
Said Ghazali
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
GETTY
'You will be martyrs': These were the words spoken by the surviving
sister as her five siblings, Jawaher, four, Dina, eight, Samar, 12,
Ikram, 15 and Tahrir, 17, lay dying beneath the rubble of their home;
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The five Palestinian sisters were fast asleep when a night-time Israeli
airstrike hit the next-door mosque in Gaza. One of the walls collapsed
on to their small asbestos-roofed home and they were all killed in
their beds. The eldest sister, Tahrir, was 17 years old, the youngest,
Jawaher, just four.
"They grow up day after day and night after night. Within a second, I
have lost them," the girls' father, Anwar Balousha, said yesterday. The
37-year-old, along with another three of his children, was himself
injured in the attack on the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp.
The funerals of the sisters ? Tahrir, 17; Ikram, 15; Samar, 12; Dina
eight; and Jawaher, four ? were attended by family members and
thousands of mourners. But with space running out in the cemetery, the
five girls had to be buried in just three graves, one for the eldest
and the others forced to share.
Mr Balousha wept down the phone, saying he felt "how a father who lost
his five daughters would feel". With recorded readings from the Koran
audible in the background, along with occasional explosions in the
distance, he added: "It is the will of Allah. We are believers in God."
Amid the pile of rubble that was the Balousha home yesterday, three
torn blankets could be seen poking out from the ruins along with a
painted blue iron, a broken brown cupboard and a baby's bed.
The Israeli military said it had targeted the next-door mosque because
it was a "known gathering place" of Hamas adherents. It said four
gunmen were inside it at the time of the attack. The mosque was named
Imad Akel after the former leader of the Hamas military wing.
As Israeli strikes continued, the uncle of the dead sisters said the
family had been innocent victims. "We are not those who are firing
rockets against Israel," Ibrahim Balousha said. "We are just people,
human beings and not animals."
The Balousha family had moved out of their house when the Israeli
bombing started on Saturday but they had decided to return "to meet
their fate" in the words of the dead girls' uncle. He said that three
missiles had been used in the airstrike at around 11.20pm on Sunday
night and that hundreds of neighbours had arrived to help in the wake
of the carnage.
After the funeral, 16-year-old Iman, who was briefly buried in the
rubble of the family home but survived, described her unlucky siblings'
dying moments. "I told my sisters, you will be martyrs, this is the
end."
Her grieving uncle said that Hamas had taken advantage of the funeral
to chant slogans including "Vengeance, Vengeance". Shouts of "Bomb Tel
Aviv" were also heard. But Ibrahim Balousha said he had given the
militant group short shrift. "I told them, this is a funeral and not a
rally."
Times were already tough for the family of refugees even before the
latest tragedy. The girls' father is unemployed for 11 months of the
year, picking up work selling Ka'ak bread around Ramadan. The family
depend on food rations from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
and a $40 (£27.50) monthly handout. "The story is almost the same for
decades," Ibrahim Balousha said: "Intifada and miseries, poverty and
catastrophes."
UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said: "The killing of these young
girls is another tragic illustration that this bombardment is exacting
a terrible price on innocent civilians. As with the killing of UNRWA
students [on Saturday] we hope there will be a thorough and impartial
and transparent investigation.
"Most important of all there has to be accountability. We need to know
if international law was violated and if so, by whom," he added.
The UN yesterday issued a "conservative" estimate of the number of
civilians killed in three days of unprecedentedly fierce aerial
bombardment, putting the death toll at 62. It is a deliberately
conservative estimate because it excludes all men in the Gaza City area
to ensure that it does not accidentally include uniformed personnel.
The Palestinian Centre of Human Rights said that "most" of the more
than 300 casualties were civilian but their tally includes Hamas
policemen. It also said some bodies had still to be identified because
they were so badly disfigured and that its field officers ? who aim to
chart every Palestinian casualty ? are facing "extreme difficulties in
visiting some areas, particularly those under multiple bombardment.
The Israeli military insists that it is doing its utmost to prevent
civilian casualties but repeatedly points out that Hamas regularly and
"cynically and specifically" uses locations in heavily built-up areas.
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