They describe ambulances shot at and stopped from arriving at their destinations; hospitals invaded and medical personnel prevented at gunpoint from carrying out their responsibilities; people bleeding to death while soldiers block, at gunpoint and in tanks, their safe passage to medical relief; corpses rotting in hospital corridors(numerous e-mails warn of the threat of imminent epidemics); relatives forbidden to carry out decent burials (one group of the slain had to be buried in a Ramallah parking lot); civilians shot if they venture out their doors; massive looting and vandalizing of homes; cultural institutions invaded and files destroyed; electrical systems for water pumps destroyed so that whole urban areas have their water supplies cut off; internationals and Palestinian press members wounded by Israeli gun-fire.
April 6, as I write: today's most urgent e-mail described a spreading catastrophe: "Deliberately Created Humanitarian Crisis Reaches Intolerable Point April 6th, 2001, 11AM." I read that six field hospitals report scores of people in serious-to-critical condition, doctors are forced to operate with minimal equipment.
In one such improvised center, a mosque, corpses rot in the operating room while Israeli snipers fire on anyone trying to enter or leave. Another section of this particular cry for help tells me that Apache helicopters in Jenin have "attacked and seriously damaged around 50 houses in the western side of the camp, 20 people are reported injured, bleeding in the street. Reports from the inhabitants are that there are 15 dead bodies in different locations, but again ambulances came under attack when trying to gain access to these bodies, this time with ammunition from the helicopters."
April 6, as I write: today's most urgent e-mail described a spreading catastrophe: "Deliberately Created Humanitarian Crisis Reaches Intolerable Point April 6th, 2001, 11AM." I read that six field hospitals report scores of people in serious-to-critical condition, doctors are forced to operate with minimal equipment.
In one such improvised center, a mosque, corpses rot in the operating room while Israeli snipers fire on anyone trying to enter or leave. Another section of this particular cry for help tells me that Apache helicopters in Jenin have "attacked and seriously damaged around 50 houses in the western side of the camp, 20 people are reported injured, bleeding in the street. Reports from the inhabitants are that there are 15 dead bodies in different locations, but again ambulances came under attack when trying to gain access to these bodies, this time with ammunition from the helicopters."