GAZA - After 22 days of devastating Israeli air strikes and shelling, shocked Palestinians emerged onto the rubble-strewn streets of the Gaza Strip on Sunday to collect their dead and inspect their shattered homes.
Fearing renewed Israeli strikes, the police chief in the northern Gaza Strip ordered his men to move only in very small groups and to guard police headquarters and public buildings, not going inside them unless absolutely necessary.
"Be careful," one officer told policemen. "This is not a real calm."Israeli strikes killed scores of policemen on the first day of the war.
Israel classes Gaza's police as combatants, although some lawyers say they should be regarded as civilians.
"I got out with only what I'm wearing." Israeli soldiers have told Reuters reporters of going in with overwhelming force and, in at least one case, of bulldozing a house to kill a suspected guerrilla fighter inside.
International humanitarian law experts say troops are obliged not only to do all they can to avoid harming civilians but also to avoid destroying civilian property.
Israel has rejected suggestions that it may have committed war crimes, though a number of international bodies, including the United Nations' refugee agency in Gaza, urged investigations after the deaths of children and other civilians.
As rescue workers pulled more bodies out of wrecked buildings, residents looked on in sorrow and disbelief.One woman recognized the remains of her husband. "He was a fighter," she said, holding an infant. "We did not know he had been killed ... This child has become an orphan."
The man's mother prayed for vengeance. "May God punish Israel and punish America," she said. "They killed my son."
Many of those who took shelter in U.N. school compounds during the fighting left to inspect their homes, only to return to the U.N. refuge on finding their houses destroyed. "We still have 45,000 people taking shelters in our schools across the Gaza Strip," said Adnan Abu Hasna, a media adviser with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza.
"We are trying to reach for people in isolated areas as well, the needs are great," he said.
Source: Reuters