sheja’iya was a vibrant district in east gaza city with about 100,000 residents, just east of gaza city. saturday night, july 19, the occupation army attacked and apparently also occupied sheja’iya. those who could, fled their homes on sunday, 20.07., some still in their pyjamas. many sought refuge in front of al shifa hospital in gaza city or in unrwa schools that were opened as shelters. with the exception of short humanitarian windows that proved deadly, sheja’iya was completely cut off for days, with ambulances and press unable to reach the area. a massacre beyond words was comitted in the district. sheja’iya is now a place of nightmares, rubble, grey, destruction and death. only yesterday, the market in sheja’iya was repeatedly shelled, even after rescue workers and journalists had already arrived at the scene.
aljazeera shot this video of some of the massacre in sheja’iya. take time to watch it. it’s graphic, but this is what happened, and it happened in khoza’a as well. or watch it with english subtitles here.
on sunday, 26.07., during a brief humanitarian ceasefire, and on sunday 27.07. during a slightly longer ceasefire, people from sheja’iya and others went back to the district after days of massacre. mostly, they ended up evacuating bodies from the rubble. more than 150 bodies were dug out of rubble or found on the streets of sheja’iya on sunday alone. here are anne’s pictures from saturday in sheja’iya.
Gaza under Attack, Day 20, 26.07.2014
during the humanitarian ceasefire on sunday, 27.07., activist and journalist noor hazareen shot this video in sheja’iya.
here is one short story from sheja’iya
and here an update on salam shamaly, the young man/boy who was shot dead in sheja’iya on 20.07. during a ceasefire when he went back to his neighborhood with some internationals to look for his family: as ism reported, his sister recognized him on video two days later. ism followed up and heard that by the time the family was able to go back to sheja’iya – which was continually shelled and which got shelled several times yesterday again – to retrieve his body, salam’s body had started to decompose. they quote his sister shereen:
With the rest of the people, we headed towards the city center assuming that it would be a safe place. After the announcement of the truce, we heard a call through a local radio station from other family members who were stranded in the region; among them was our cousin.
Salem then disappeared for two days. We went daily to the al-Shifa Hospital to look at the records to check if they received any information about him, whether he was wounded in the hospital or a martyr, but we had no luck. My father kept asking relatives and neighbors and everyone he would meet to find out where his son could be.
On the 22nd of July in the morning, the power supply came back, which only lasts for three hours a day at my house. […]
[my sister] found a video that drew her attention titled ‘Israeli sniper killing wounded civilian’. Once she opened the video, my other sister, who was sitting next to her, screamed and said, “this is Salem’s voice. I swear, its Salem’s voice.”
We waited until the video completed buffering and saw Salem walking, helping the paramedics to rescue the injured. Then, one of us screamed and called for our father, “Dad, Salem is alive, come!”
We got a chair for our father, sat down, and all concentrated on the laptop screen waiting for the end. Suddenly the camera was distorted and then it settled on Salem lying on the ground. We all became quiet and speechless. We sat calmly and our father said, “thank God, Salem was wounded. Maybe the foreigners took him to a hospital…” But before my father could finish his sentence, Salem was shot the third and fatal shot.
Salem was a young man in the prime of his youth. He had dreamt to live his life like any other at his age. He was handsome and affectionate and could never hide what was in his heart. He has been waiting to grow up and to marry and have a family. We were waiting for him to grow up in order to assist our sick father and to support our family. He did not like politics at all. He was only in interested in his family and football.
Why did they kill him in this brutal way? He was shot in broad daylight and, during the time of truce, the only thing in his hand was a cheap mobile phone. […] why did they not leave him in order to regain consciousness or to be rescued? Why did they shoot a second and third bullet?! […]Is it not enough that they have deprived us from his joyful presence? Why are they also depriving us from the chance to say goodbye to him and to bury him?
we now know that salem, like others, was actually murdered out of revenge, out of a clear, planned ahead policy of killing people in sheja’iya.
ism also released the full video of their walk in sheja’iya with salem that ended in his execution-style murder. (if you can’t see it here, watch it in the original post)