Chronicling the Killed and Injured in Gaza

The killed, the injured by Zionist bombings, Deir al Balah, Nov 20

 by Eva Bartlett - In Gaza

Mid-morning we are rocked by an Israeli bombing in Deir al Balah. Running to the empty half of the roof, we see it right away, a thick black plume of smoke rising.

An hour or so later, at Deir’s al Aqsa hospital, the injuries come rolling in: the Zionist army has drone bombed, then F-16d a home not far away, and around the same time has drone bombed a street, killing a Palestinian journalist.


The injured and the dead are delivered by ambulance, car, or whatever is available.



Abu Y, a medic, pulls in, delivers his injured victim, and takes off to the same F-16d house, telling me a fire has broken out in the area.

Two cars screech into the small hospital parking lot to deliver more injured from the F-16ing. A boy is wheeled past and into ICU.

In the ICU, the child moans in pain while stoically allowing the doctors to probe his stomach shrapnel wound. The doctor tells us he’ll need immediate surgery for his stomach and arm wounds. Ironically for all the martyred and injured children throughout the Gaza Strip it is International Children’s Day today.

He tells us so far at least 5 were injured in the F-16ing of the Abu Talaa family home, including 2 children. We later visit the area and see a gaping crater, the home obliterated with all that was inside. A young man pokes at the crater’s edge, under a wall of rubble, trying to find any un-ruined possessions within reach.

An ambulance arrives, in much less of a hurry: it’s victim is dead. The body of journalist Mohammed Beddar, approximately 25 years old, is wheeled into the hospital, back out, and around the side to the mortuary. One of the Palestinian journalists on site to film the martyrs and injured begins to sob when he sees his dead friend and cousin.

Soon after, a middle-aged woman arrives on foot, walking quickly to the emergency room to confirm her fears. She bursts out of the hospital in wails, drops to the ground rolling in her wailing grief that he son has been killed.

An explosion goes off somewhere in the vicinity, but the hospital building blocks the view of any smoke plume.

When the chaos dies down a bit, I look up and notice the streaks in the sky left by Israeli warplanes.

A nurse and a hospital admin are talking. “They’re bombing civilians, it’s getting worse and worse.”

The admin woman tells me of the Abu Khosa family killed yesterday in Bureij, central Gaza. Three young children, killing while playing outside their house in the morning, F-16d.

They speak of Nusseirat today, of kids again playing in the street near which an Israeli F-16 chose to bomb. Ten shrapnel injuries. Children.

“They are targeting children more this time,” says the nurse.

“Around sunset and after, I don’t let any of my children go outside the house, not even the older ones,” says the admin woman.

Emad’s brother, a pathologist, walks past us. He has been working around the clock, going from hospital to hospital for his work on the killed. “I’ve seen 11 martyrs today,” he says. It is only early afternoon.

By evening there is talk over the internet that a truce has been reached. But the drones have multiplied and amplified, and the bombings continued. In Rafah and the north, reports from journalists say the bombing is getting crazy. Bloggers and Tweeters in Gaza City say the coast is being hammered by Israeli warship shelling.

Al Jazeera reports that the truce is no more, not yet:

A Hamas official said on Tuesday that Egyptian efforts to broker a truce with Israel had been held up because the Israeli government had yet to respond to proposals, indicating there would be no ceasefire until Wednesday at the earliest.

“The Israeli side has not responded yet, so we will not hold a (news) conference this evening and must wait until tomorrow,” Ezzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas leader, told Reuters. “The truce is now held up because we are waiting for the Israeli side to respond,” he added

The last morbid death count I saw, on Al Jazeera, was 4 hours ago, bombings ago. It stood at over 120 Palestinians killed since Wednesday. The number of killed and injured Palestinians will have risen since 6 pm.