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Hamas still standing, but some Gaza districts gone
Tue Jan 20, 2009 9:46am EST
By Douglas Hamilton
SALATIN, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Palestinian families returned to their homes in
the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday but many found there was nothing
recognizable left standing.
Women and children gazed around in dismay as they came in sight of Salatin,
trundling slowly along on overloaded donkey carts or packed into decrepit cars,
over roads ripped up by Israeli tanks and explosions.
There was a fierce battle here for high ground overlooking the city of Gaza
after Israel launched a ground offensive 16 days ago against Hamas Islamists
who rule the enclave.
A used Israeli army intravenous drip bag lay discarded in the road, and further
on an Israeli army boot was half covered in the rubble of Nabil Sultan's
flattened house.
Houses left and right were blasted by tank and heavy machine-gun fire. Some,
like Sultan's, were pancaked by bombs from the F-16s of the Israeli airforce.
A dazed man wrapped in a blanket against the early morning chill said he simply
could not find his house.
"The Israelis told us to leave our homes up here. They said it would be
dangerous. Hamas fighters came and told us the same," said Sultan.
About 45,000 Gazans took refugee in United Nations-run schools during the
fighting. Nearly 1,300 Palestinians were killed and 5,300 wounded. Most
casualties were civilians.
Israel lost three civilians hit by Hamas rocket fire in Israel and 10 soldiers
killed in action, including four in "friendly fire" incidents. Some 50 were
wounded.
Israel declared a ceasefire three days ago, matched a few hours later by Hamas.
On Tuesday an Israeli gunboat patrolling offshore repeatedly fired bursts of
heavy cannon, but there was no sound of return fire and no report of any fresh
fighting.
Ignoring the lopsided death toll and the awful devastation inflicted on some
parts of Gaza by Israel's long-range heavy weapons, Hamas has declared victory.
One Gaza newspaper cartoon on Tuesday depicted a hand thrust up from twisted
ruins, flashing a V for Victory sign.
But Hamas called the people out onto the streets to celebrate its defiance of
the Jewish state, confident that thousands would heed the summons.
"THIS WAS MY HOUSE"
"We've won the war. But we've lost everything," said the scrawny Sultan, with a
thin smile. "This was my house," he shrugged, by a pile of smashed concrete and
ripped bedding.
Openly criticizing Hamas in front of foreigners is rare. Praising the Islamist
group and its local leader Ismail Haniyeh is easier. "If Haniyeh is all right,
then all this is nothing," said one heavily veiled grandmother, waving an arm
at the blasted landscape of her Jabalya district.
She would not give her name.
Israel said its forces were sent in to "change the reality" on the ground in
Gaza, to punish Hamas and deter its militants from firing rockets into Israeli
cities to the north and east of the coastal enclave.
Up on the Jabalya ridge to the east of the city, the reality is now one of
total destruction. There are no buildings left standing to shelter Hamas rocket
crews. No more orchards for them to hide among either. Not even a big chicken
coop.
But these were homes, not forts, and now their owners are left to scavenge
through the wreckage, retrieving whatever they can: mattresses, door-knobs,
taps, doors, electrical switches.
The first efforts of what will be a mammoth clean-up job in these shattered
districts has just begun.
Bloated corpses of dead horses and donkeys have to be collected and piles of
rotting garbage removed before disease takes hold. Water and power, patchy
before the war, have to be restored and impassable roads cleared of rubble and
smashed cars. Shattered sewage pipes have to be uncovered and repaired.
Down in the city many streets are unscathed, apart from the targets of pinpoint
bombing by the Israeli air force.
At the Taha mosque, which locals said was hit at two in the morning, only the
minaret was left standing. Adjacent buildings were scarred but mainly intact.
Not everyone was so lucky.
"Maybe the Israelis think the mosque is for Hamas. Maybe they think there is
some guns here," said 14-year-old Abed, accurately giving Israel's
justification for hitting religious buildings. He was sleeping nearby when the
warplanes attacked.
(Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Dominic Evans)
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---------------
Jusfiq Hadjar gelar Sutan Maradjo Lelo
Allah yang disembah orang Islam tipikal dan yang digambarkan oleh al-Mushaf itu
dungu, buas, kejam, keji, ganas, zalim lagi biadab hanyalah Allah fiktif.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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