Jennie Matthew
28 July 2006 Agence France Presse
GAZA CITY: “When the bomb exploded from the plane. I felt I was in hell, real hell,” shouts 31-year-old Ghassan. Professing allegiance to Palestinian national security but parroting ideology atune to armed factions, Ghassan went to Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp last week to fight the Israelis during a particularly bloody incursion.
“I feel chemicals. I feel high heat, I feel high pain,” he elaborates in English, both legs heavily bandaged, as patients and visitors brush past in a crowded corridor of Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital.
“They found shrapnel with ‘test’ written on it,” he shouts.
Accusations abound that the Israelis, pressing a nearly five-week offensive in which at least 130 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, are using a new weapon.
Doctors say they have never before seen such specific burn wounds, concentrated so much on the lower body and causing such a high propensity of amputations. The Health Ministry has already called for an independent inquiry.