VARIOUS: JENIN REFUGEE CAMP BECOMES SCENE OF DEVASTATION AFTER FIERCE FIGHTING/U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL PEACE MISSION CONTINUES

Record ID: 645137

  • Title: VARIOUS: JENIN REFUGEE CAMP BECOMES SCENE OF DEVASTATION AFTER FIERCE FIGHTING/U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL PEACE MISSION CONTINUES
  • Date: 14th April 2002
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN WHO LIVES NEARBY THE HOUSE WHERE THE BODIES (ABOVE) WERE FOUND, SAYING "Every time a shell or rocket was fired at us, they (the Israelis) would start to laugh and become joyous and start tossing picture frames on the floor, but I didn't expect they would do this." (W6) BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK (APRIL 13, 2002) (REUTERS) HAS BETHLEHEM SKYLINE/ SLV CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY COMPOUND; SLV TANK MOVING DOWN STREET (2 SHOTS) SLV SMOKE RISING FROM BUILDINGS IN THE AREA (UNCLEAR WHICH BUILDINGS THEY ARE); ISRAELI SOLDIERS ON ROOFTOP; TWO TANKS IN STREET/ AUDIO OF GUNFIRE (3 SHOTS) (U4) BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK (APRIL 13, 2002) (REUTERS) SURVEILLANCE BALLOON OVER BETHLEHEM / PULL OUT TO WIDE VIEW OF BETHLEHEM
  • Embargoed: 29th April 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JENIN CAMP, BETHLEHEM, RAMALLAH, WEST BANK / JERUSALEM / WASHINGTON,D.C., UNITED STATES
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: Conflict,General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVABO46N5C4VX3I4J732PXO56RFN
  • Story Text: The once-teeming Jenin refugee camp has become a scene of devastation, its houses and passageways damaged and riddled with bullet holes after fierce fighting against Israeli occupation. Several bodies lay decaying in the inner-city camp, the epicentre of resistance to Israel's two-week-old West Bank campaign.
    U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, scrambling to put his peace mission back on track, has reinstated plans to meet Yasser Arafat after the Palestinian leader met U.S. demands that he denounce terrorism.
    And in the West Bank city of Nablus, two people have been pulled out alive from beneath the rubble of a house that collapsed days earlier amid heavy fighting in the area.
    The Jenin refugee camp was a scene of devastation on Saturday (April 13, 2002) after fierce fighting against Israeli occupation.
    Women and children struggled to survive in the ruins of the camp, cut off from the world by the Israeli army as it crushed Palestinian militants there.
    "They (the Israelis) ruined our lives," said one woman weeping.
    The bodies of four Palestinian men lay blackened by decomposition in the ruins of a living room, apparently devastated by a missile.
    The Israeli army has said at least 200 Palestinians have been been killed in Israel's 15-day-old West Bank offensive, which Israel said was launched to root out militants after a wave of suicide bombings killed scores of Israelis.
    Palestinians have accused Israel of carrying out a "massacre" in Jenin camp. Israel has dismissed the charge as "propaganda" saying it fought carefully to avoid civilian casualties and only exchanged fire with gunmen.
    Spent rocket and bullet casings and glass shards speckled the twisting lanes, living rooms, kitchens and bathrooms of homes seen in a tour of the refugee quarter, where only a few hundred of an original 13,000 residents remain.
    Residents said the army had arrested most men in the camp and had told those remaining over loudspeakers they should leave unless they wanted to end up in the rubble of their own homes.
    The army said residents either left of their own accord or gunmen had forced them out in order to booby-trap their homes.
    Some houses that did not seem to have been targets or scenes of fighting appeared to have been ransacked.
    "Every time a shell or rocket was fired at us, they (the Israelis) would start to laugh and become joyous and start tossing picture frames on the floor but I didn't expect they would do this," said one woman surveying the damage.
    Plumes of smoke could be seen rising above Bethlehem on Saturday (April 13, 2002). Witnesses said they had heard small explosions from buildings adjacent to the Church of the Nativity compound and that there was heightened troop activity around the church and its front door.
    More than 100 Palestinians, many of them armed, have been trapped inside the Church of the Nativity compound since fleeing an Israeli incursion into the town 11 days ago.
    Israel has promised not to damage the church, revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus but it has vowed to keep it surrounded until the gunmen surrender.
    A fat, torpedo-shaped balloon, apparently for Israeli military surveillance, floated over the spires and bell towers of the skyline of the city.
    U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, scrambling to put his peace mission back on track, on Saturday reinstated plans to meet Yasser Arafat after the Palestinian leader met U.S. demands that he denounce terrorism.
    Powell had called off talks with Arafat set for Saturday following a suicide bombing that killed six people in Jerusalem on Friday (April 12), but rescheduled the meeting for Sunday after the Palestinian president condemned the attack.
    State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Powell had decided to go ahead with the talks at Arafat's besieged headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah because his statement condemning terrorism included "positive elements".
    "The secretary will work with Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian leadership and to help make these statements a reality with effective action to bring and end to terror and violence and an early resumption of a political process,"
    Boucher said.
    Earlier in the day, Powell urged restraint by Israeli forces, which swept into half a dozen West Bank towns on Saturday in defiance of U.S. pressure to end the offensive.
    In the West Bank city of Nablus the bodies of eight Palestinians from one family have been pulled from the rubble of their home which collapsed earlier in the week amid heavy fighting, witnesses said.
    Two members of the Shuby family who lived in the house, Abdullah, 65, and Shamsa, 56, were pulled out alive. They were found on Friday (April 12) trapped in a room under the debris, about five days after the three-storey building came down.
    A neighbour of the family, Samer Ajaj, said the three-storey house had been damaged at the start of the week when Israeli troops, battling Palestinian gunmen, used rockets from aircraft and shells from tanks in the crowded area of the old city.
    On Monday (April 8) morning, after hearing explosions through the night, Ajaj said an Israeli army bulldozer ploughed into the building.
    The Israeli army, which launched a military offensive in West Bank on March 29, did not have any immediate comment on the Nablus incident saying it did not have enough details.
    The army, which says it has been careful to avoid civilian casualties, in the past used bulldozers to widen narrow alleys in West Bank towns and cities to allow heavy armour to pass through.
    It was not clear if it was the bulldozers or the damage sustained in the fighting that caused the house to collapse.
    Journalists had difficulty obtaining independent accounts of the fighting in Nablus because Israel declared the city a closed military area. Residents were confined to their houses and no journalists were allowed to enter from outside.
    The first corpse to be pulled out of the rubble was Samir Shuby, recovered on Monday. The others were dug out later, and included Samir's pregnant wife and three children. The bodies of Samir's father and two sisters were also found.
    Nablus Governor Mahmoud al-Aloul said finding the bodies confirmed fears that many people had been buried in the old city, where Israeli troops faced fierce resistance from Palestinian gunmen after they entered Nablus on April 3.
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