Roundabout Dubai

A Little footnote in the War!

The IDF (in its usual modesty) doesn’t like to take credit for such brilliant display of war ethics. I know some of you will read the story in the newspapers tomorrow, but here's the footnote version of it:

1- Morning of Saturday 15 July 2006. The IDF, using loudspeakers, warns the residents of the village of Marwahin in South Lebanon to leave the village within two hours or face complete destruction of their homes and endanger their lives.

2- The residents, or many of them, run frantically to a UN peacekeeping unit HQ, which is not far from Marwahin, and they beg the Ghanian soldiers there to allow them to take shelter at the UN building.

3- The UN soldiers, perhaps remembering the Qana incident in 1996 at the Fijian UN peacekeeping HQ, refuse to let the people in.

4- The people, desperate and running out of time, scramble to flee for safety any way they could.

5- Two families cram their members into 2 vehicles and drive away from the border village.

6- Not far from Marwahin the 2 vehicles are hit directly by Israeli shells or missiles. Both families, all 20 people or so, including women and children, are killed.

7- Bravo to the IDF for warning innocent civilians in advance and for their surgical accuracy in hitting their targets.

8- End of story.

Post Script: Well may be not quite the end of story; I just listened to Mayada Abdalla, the only survivor from the bombed Marwahin villagers caravan speaking to Al Jazeera by phone from Tyre. According to her, there were 23 people killed in the bombing. All of the people were from the Abdalla family, her family. The girl was very brave and her spontaneous responses were moving and profound. Despite losing all of her extended family, Mayada kept drawing attention to the plight of other civilians under siege in Lebanon. One sentence in particular is worth repeating here: "Those who died, they're gone, may they rest in peace; but who is going to guarantee the safety of the living?"

posted by bandicoot @ 9:38 PM