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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=286197
Fresh
evidence of Jenin atrocities By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem 18 April
2002
Evidence of atrocities by Israeli troops in Jenin refugee camp
grew yesterday when a British pathologist said he found "highly
suspicious" wounds during the first autopsy on a victim.
Derrick Pounder, professor of forensic medicine at Dundee University,
who is working with Amnesty International, visited the ruined
camp and said: "Claims that a large number of civilians died and
are under the rubble are highly credible.It is not believable
that only a few people have been killed, given the reports we
have that a large number of people were inside three and four-storey
buildings when they were demolished."
The autopsy on the 38-year-old Palestinian revealed that "he was
either shot in the foot, and then in the back, or shot in the
back first receiving a fatal wound and his corpse was for
some reason shot in the foot," he said. "Whichever order the shots
occurred in, it was highly suspicious".
As the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, left for America yesterday,
having failed to secure a ceasefire, international fury was growing
over events at Jenin. The camp, home to 13,500 refugees, was stormed
by Israeli forces a fortnight ago in what Mr Sharon called a counter-terrorism
operation against Palestinian militants. The furore has severely
damaged Israel's international standing, sending it to its lowest
point for several decades.
Palestinians who survived the long battle in which Israeli helicopters
fired rockets and machine-guns into a densely populated area
have said the Israeli army committed many atrocities. Witnesses
have described people being shot as they surrendered; houses being
bulldozed with people inside; the use of human shields; the burial
of 32 bodies in a trench, and one case of Israeli soldiers turning
on the household gas supply before tossing a stun grenade into
a room full of people.
Richard Cook, head of operations for Unrwa the UN agency for
Palestinian refugees visited the camp yesterday. He said: "I
was absolutely appalled. I anticipated it to a degree but the
devastation was much greater than I expected."
The Foreign Office said "disproportionate and excessive" force
had been used by Israel, and "clearly civilians were not properly
protected".
================================================================================
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,686092,00.html
Shock
at lack of rescue efforts in Jenin
Aid Agencies must help now, says Amnesty
Brian
Whitaker
Thursday
April 18, 2002
The
Guardian
Human rights groups protested yesterday at the lack of rescue
efforts in the Jenin refugee camp amid claims that a family buried
for several days in the rubble had pleaded for help by phone.
"It is shocking that the [Israeli] authorities have not asked
for help and that the international community is not offering
it," Amnesty International said. "Help is needed now to save what
life there is left."
Speaking from inside the ruined camp, Amnesty representative Javier
Zuniga said: "This is one of the worst scenes of devastation I
have ever witnessed. There is a real possibility that people are
still alive under the rubble of their former homes."
Amnesty said that although it was contacted by a local human rights
group which had received a call from a family of 10 trapped underground
and asking for help, there was still no concerted effort to search
for and rescue survivors.
Israeli tanks again fired machine guns into Jenin late yesterday
and loudspeakers announced a new curfew, witnesses said. Earlier
in the day, about 50 tanks were seen leaving the city, but it
was unclear whether they were pulling out entirely or just regrouping.
The Israeli army had no immediate comment.
The area, where Israeli bulldozers demolished many homes during
the bloody battle, remained a closed military zone according to
the army, although some organisations were let in.
Derrick Pounder, Professor of Forensic Medicine at Dundee University
and a member of the Amnesty delegation, gained access to the Jenin
government hospital. He was conducting postmortems on the bodies
there. Scores more bodies are thought to remain in the camp, mainly
in the rubble of razed houses.
Law, a Palestinian human rights group, said that three lawyers
managed to visit the hospital after being turned away by a soldier
who refused to identify himself or his commander. While waiting
to enter, the lawyers said they had seen soldiers at a checkpoint
obstructing ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent and the
UN which were trying to reach the hospital, Law said.
Mary Robinson, the UN human rights chief, urged Israel yesterday
to let her travel there with a delayed fact-finding mission, citing
"growing concerns over recent events in Jenin".
The UN Human Rights Commission wanted its mission to investigate
the violence, but Israel, which views the body as biased, has
failed to approve it.
===================================================================================
Amnesty calls on UN to order urgent inquiry into alleged Jenin
abuses From Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent,
in New York
MIDDLE EAST: Amnesty International has called on the UN Security
Council to order an urgent investigation into alleged abuses at
the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin.
In a statement, the human rights organisation urged the council
to send in its own team of international experts.
"According
to the principles of international law, when deaths have occurred
in disputed circumstances there must be an impartial investigation
with the cooperation of all sides," Amnesty said.
"We
are calling for international experts to be deployed and permitted
to enter Jenin now with a mandate to carry out a prompt, independent
and thorough investigation and to report their findings publicly,"
the statement added.
The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, is to brief the Security
Council tomorrow on his views about the need for an international
peacemaking force to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to
an end. The briefing had originally been expected today.
Although Mr Annan has made no public comment so far on the efforts
of the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, to convene an international
peace conference, he had discussions by telephone yesterday with
Mr Powell, who briefed him on the plan.
At its annual session in Geneva, the UN Commission on Human Rights
(CHR) approved a draft decision by roll-call vote, expressing
its deep dismay that an April 5th resolution on the human rights
situation in the Middle East had not been implemented.
The resolution requested that the UN High Commissioner on Human
Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, lead a delegation to the Middle East
right away and report back to the CHR before the end of its session
on April 26th.
Up to time of writing, the Israeli government had not given permission
for this visit. In the interim, the CHR has urged Mrs Robinson
to report on the human rights situation in the West Bank on the
basis of reports from all concerned organisations working there.
In a separate development, the deputy head of Ireland's UN mission,
Mr Gerard Corr, told the UN Security Council that "the fight against
terrorism can never be at the expense of human rights".
Ambassador Corr said Ireland was in "full agreement" with the
recent statement by Mr Annan that "any sacrifice of human rights
in the struggle against terror is not only wrong in itself, but
will ultimately be self-defeating".
He said the legislative and administrative requirements in implementing
the anti-terrorist Resolution 1373 were "complex and daunting"
for many member-states and there should be "sustained appreciation"
of this.
He added that "a realistic sense of the complexity of things"
would continue to be the safest guide towards the UN's agreed
goals.
Implementing Resolution 1373 posed particular challenges to many
developing countries and this might involve the provision of expertise
and assistance as appropriate, Mr Corr said.
Meanwhile the Palestinian information minister called for implementation
of the UN resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal from
all towns, villages and refugee camps occupied by the Israeli
army. ==================================================================================
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56619-2002Apr15.html
Washington Post
Lives
Reduced to Rubble
Jenin
Camp Is a Scene of Devastation But Yields No Evidence of a Massacre
By
Molly Moore
Washington
Post Foreign Service
Tuesday,
April 16, 2002; Page A01
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank, April 15 -- The heart of this battered
Palestinian shantytown of 13,000 inhabitants has been erased from
the face of the earth, its maze of apartment houses and twisting
streets bulldozed by the Israeli military into a vast crater of
broken concrete.
The crater -- about the size of two square city blocks -- lies
at the end of a dusty river of destruction that looks as if it
swept through in a fierce flood, taking with it sad souvenirs
from the homes and lives it obliterated: a hand-knit blue sweater,
a lace window curtain, cooking pots, a car sliced in half.
The rubble has obscured many facts, but some are indisputable.
Some of the most brutal urban battles, heaviest air barrages and
most devastating ground tactics in more than two weeks of Israeli
assaults against Palestinian towns and communities across the
West Bank have been waged here.
Others are less clear. Interviews with residents inside the camp
and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first
time today indicated that no evidence has surfaced to support
allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale
massacres or executions by Israeli troops.
Thus far, about 40 bodies have been recovered, according to the
Israeli military and aid groups.
"Everybody
was thinking mass graves in the way we think of Kosovo," said
Guy Siri, deputy director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. "I don't think we have
seen that."
Residents related numerous accounts of individual killings of
noncombatants. Nasser Abu Hatab, a mentally disabled man, was
shot once in the head and nine times in the chest by soldiers
when he failed to follow orders to leave his house minutes before
it was bulldozed, they said. Hafaf Dusoky, 54, apparently did
not answer a jittery soldier's knock quickly enough and was shot
dead through the door.
Residents also said that Israeli war tactics became especially
harsh after 13 soldiers were killed April 9 in an elaborate ambush
set by Palestinian fighters in the camp. One resident said he
counted 71 helicopter missile attacks within a 30-minute period
the night after the ambush, nearly as many as had been fired previously
in an entire night. Residents also said the military stepped up
the pace of the bulldozings and stopped giving them advance warnings
to leave their homes.
Ali Damaj said he peeked through his kitchen window as a bulldozer
leveled his entire neighborhood -- first one house, then two,
then six. Suddenly, he said, he was watching the wall of his neighbor's
house push his refrigerator across the room.
"I
felt the house shaking back and forth," said Damaj, whose house
was left partially standing. "I was in a state of shock. My hair
was standing on end."
Abdul Hassan Bahaldin, 26, said he heard the first tanks roll
into the camp from all four sides of town at around midnight on
April 3. "It sounded terrible, it was very frightening, the kids
started screaming, we panicked," he said.
All 21 members of his family who lived in a house on the edge
of the camp scampered into what they considered the safest room,
the basement. They had already stockpiled supplies. A few hours
later they heard footsteps on the floor above them and soldiers
burst into the basement demanding to know, "Where are the men?
Where are the men?"
Bahaldin said he knew the soldiers meant fighters for the militant
groups that operated in the camp. Israeli officials have called
the Jenin refugee camp a nest that housed both suicide bombers
and architects of suicide attacks.
The soldiers wore night-vision goggles, communicated with soldiers
outside on wireless phones and seemed "frightened" and eager to
move on to their next command post, according to Bahaldin, who
said they used his three-story home as "a bridge to the camp."
The next day at about noon, Bahaldin's sister-in-law decided to
dash up the open-air stairwell to retrieve baby formula she had
forgotten upstairs. Israeli snipers fired at her from a nearby
rooftop, he said.
For four days, the military pummeled the camp with rockets, missiles
and artillery shells fired from U.S.-provided AH-64 Apache helicopters
and tanks. Houses throughout the camp were sprayed with bullets
and gouged with gaping holes. Not a single glass window appeared
to have survived the onslaught.
Damaj, a member of Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat's Fatah organization
and head of the camp's emergency response committee, communicated
with a cell phone today by hot-wiring his electrical cord to hand-held
batteries. He said the bulldozers arrived four days into the campaign,
just after 10 a.m. on a Saturday, and demolished everything in
their paths.
Within 10 minutes, Damaj said, the machines had flattened six
homes belonging to his neighbors. As soon as the bulldozers moved
to the next street, soldiers swarmed into the newly plowed road.
"They
were shooting everything ahead of them, everything they saw, everything
that moved," Damaj said.
Before the attacks of the past two weeks, the Jenin refugee camp
was a jumble of square concrete houses and apartments stacked
atop one another on a hillside. Residents traversed the community
through a network of tiny alleyways and a series of steps connecting
various levels of the town. Today, the walk from Damaj's neighborhood
to what was once the center of town was a panorama of the kind
of devastation usually associated with earthquakes or landslides.
Bulldozers flattened dozens of cinder-block houses and ripped
off the walls of others, exposing their interiors like the open
side of a dollhouse: a bedroom with sleeping mats laid neatly
across the floors, a kitchen sink with tin plates stacked on the
cabinet, a bathroom wall of gleaming white tile, all wide open
to the elements.
The bulldozers seemed to have nicked the pillars of other houses,
tilting the buildings on their sides as though a petulant giant
had pushed them. The heavy machinery took giant hunks out of the
concrete corners of other houses.
Rockets and missiles turned other buildings into a spaghetti of
twisted metal and broken chunks of concrete.
Rooftop water tanks and satellite dishes were pocked with bullet
holes. Cars that had been cut in half or smashed flat by tanks
lined the streets. Some alleyways were apparently the scenes of
such intense shooting that they appeared to be carpeted in bullet
casings.
The fine, spiderweb-like lines of wire-guided TOW missiles draped
across passageways and trees where they slumped after leading
missiles to their targets.
The camp initially appeared deserted. Scrawny cats yowled. The
cracks of gunfire, booms of tank rounds and roar of patrolling
tanks could be heard throughout the day. But deep inside the maze
of the camp, largely out of sight of the patrols, residents were
beginning to venture out.
Thousands remained in their homes, hiding in basements or other
interior rooms, according to residents.
Ibrahim bu Hassan, 53, a farmer with silver hair, emerged from
his basement for the first time in 10 days on Friday. The first
thing he checked was his satellite dish: "It was full of holes,"
he said. "They didn't want me to watch the news."
Residents picked their way through the camp, peeking around corners
and out gates and doorways before dashing across alleys or streets.
They posted lookouts behind the curtains of third-floor rooms
and hissed warnings of arriving tank patrols to those on the streets.
A few bolder residents walked tentatively to the center of town,
gawking in horror and awe at what was once the heart of the camp,
apartments and houses that sheltered an estimated 200 families.
Residents said that the heart of the impoverished camp was home
to many of the fighters for militant Islamic groups that put up
resistance to the Israeli attack.
Aiseh Saleh's kitchen window overlooks the destruction. The 39-year-old
teacher said her house was spared because the Israeli soldiers
took it over as a command post. She said they taped an aerial
photograph to the wall, with the houses of wanted men outlined
with a blue marker. On the day the 13 soldiers were killed, their
comrades in her house wept. The soldiers left behind several bandoliers
of bullets that her sons draped around their necks.
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