Children found alive next to their dead mothers

[ 09/01/2009 - 02:39 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday that four of its ambulance cars managed to reach a number of homes in the Zaitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City on Wednesday evening after days of the area being out of bounds.

The ICRC had been requesting a safe passage for its ambulances to reach the wounded since 3rd January, but they only got permission from the IOF on the afternoon of Wednesday 7th January.

The ICRC statement said that a joint team of ICRC personnel and Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) personnel found, in one of the houses, four children next to the corpses of their mothers who were killed by the IOF, they have been without food or water for four days. Hungry, thirsty and terrified the children were two frail to stand up.

The team also found a man alive along with 12 corpses in one of the houses and 3 corpses in another.

In another house, the ICRC and PRCS joint rescue team found 15 people still alive, some of them wounded.

"This is a shocking incident," Pierre Wettach, head of the ICRC for the region, said.

The rescue team "found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses. They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up," the statement said.

"The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded," the international Red Cross said. "Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded."