Scenes of carnage as Israeli shells strike crowd of civilians who were leaving evening prayers
The shells could
not have fallen at a worse time. Yesterday’s afternoon prayers in the
northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya were unusually busy because
worshippers had abandoned their evening prayers in the belief that if
the Israelis planned to strike, they would do so at night.
But as
the townspeople left the mosque at dusk, the explosions began, killing
at least 12 people, six of whom were children. They came only hours
before the Israeli ground offensive was launched into Gaza.
Fdil
Sobih, 40, an ambulance driver who was one of the first people to
arrive at the scene, told the Observer that the sight outside the
Ibrahim al-Maqadna mosque was horrific, and was made worse by the
desperation of locals trying to dig out those buried under the rubble
with their hands. “I saw people cut to pieces,” he said. “No one
expected this here. The mosque is a few hundred metres from the
hospital and it is heavily populated and is surrounded by houses.
“The
shell had hit the entrance of the mosque, not the mosque itself,
hitting people who were stood outside the mosque after their evening
prayer, standing talking to one another, shaking hands. They did not
deserve it,” he said.
The number of people around the mosque was higher than usual, he said.
“People
are now combining their evening and night prayers because of fear of
Israeli strikes. It was as they were leaving the mosque when they were
hit,” he said.
Sobih, who has been an ambulance worker for more
than a decade, said that he saw no evidence of any Hamas fighters among
the injured.
“They were civilians, and some were children. Some
neighbours of the mosque were helping the casualties, with blankets and
bringing them to the hospital, some neighbouring houses were also
damaged by the rockets. No one expected that Israel would fire here –
it is very crowded and so close to the hospital.”
Kamal Adwan
Hospital, which is about 400 metres from the mosque, recorded that 12
people had been killed and 30 injured, 12 of them seriously. Six of the
dead victims are believed to be under 18 years old.
The mosque is
located in a densely built area of apartment blocks and low-level
housing. Reports claimed that there were more than 200 people inside
the mosque when the Israeli shells struck.
It was not clear
whether any of the dead were Hamas fighters. The Israelis have claimed
it was suspected that the mosque has been housing militants – it is
named after a founder of Hamas who was killed by the Israelis in 2004.
However, locals have claimed that radicals no longer control the mosque.
The
attack will provoke further questions about the Israeli Defence Force’s
tactics as they search out Hamas’s military hardware and hardline
activists.
The Israeli military has destroyed several mosques
during its week-long offensive in Gaza, claiming that Hamas uses them
to store weapons. Artillery fire is less accurate than attacks from the
air using precision-guided munitions, raising the possibility of a
higher number of civilian casualties.
Ayman Mohyeldin,
al-Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza, said that attacks on mosques could
galvanise the Arab world into taking action against Israel. “This is
proof that civilians are caught up in these attacks.”
Mohyeldin
said doctors in Gaza were being overwhelmed by the number of casualties
as a result of the Israeli offensive and that hospitals were near a
state of collapse due to a lack of medicines and blood stocks.
An
artillery shell hit another building in Beit Lahiya, killing two people
and wounding five, said members of the family living there. Ambulances
could not immediately reach them because of the resulting fire, they
said.
Before yesterday’s offensive, Israel’s bombing campaign had
killed more than 430 Palestinians and left hundreds injured. The United
Nations has said that at least a quarter of the dead were civilians.
Much of Gaza’s public infrastructure has been destroyed and the
territory is in a state of emergency after eight days of bombing,
averaging one blast every 20 minutes.
Israel’s deputy chief of
staff, Brigadier General Dan Harel, said that after Israel’s operation
was finished “no Hamas building will be left standing in Gaza”. He
added: “We are hitting government buildings, production factories,
security wings and more.”
Among the targets so far have been the
Gaza Interior Ministry, police stations, television stations, prisons
and a five-storey building in the women’s wing of the Islamic
University. Humanitarian organisations have criticised the Israelis for
bombing a number of schools and a hospital.