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Anxious Palestinians flee Gaza
28/06/2006 11:27 - (SA)
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| Palestinians inspect a bridge on a main road in the Gaza Strip, destroyed by Israeli army warplanes. (Hatem Moussa, AP) |
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Rafah - Anxious men, women and children packed into rickety carts and cars fled border areas of southern Gaza in fear of their lives on Wednesday after Israeli troops rolled into the territory.
"We're going someplace safe. We saw the tanks coming and we decided to leave before anything else happens," said Mohammed Abu Zakr, arriving in the southern city of Rafah accompanied by two female relatives and several young children.
Wearing sandals and dirty trousers, the middle-aged man said he had abandoned his farmland home east of the city after Israeli troops crossed the border under the cover of darkness aiming to release a kidnapped soldier.
To the sound of fire from combat helicopters, horse-drawn carts loaded down with families trundled into Rafah, an impoverished city where more than 40 Palestinians were killed in a devastating Israeli military raid in 2004.
Deafening explosions
Veiled mothers walked along roads dimly lit by streetlamps, hand in hand with young children looking bleak and refusing to talk as they headed for shelter with family and friends.
To the north, areas were plunged into darkness after Israeli warplanes hit a power station, sending flames pouring into the night sky. There were deafening explosions as three bridges and a road were also targeted in a series of air strikes.
Hospitals fully stocked with blood
Bracing for casualties, Ali Mussa, the director of Rafah hospital, told AFP that his team of doctors, nurses and technicians were ready to receive any casualties caused by the incursion.
"We brought extra quantities of medicines and drugs. We are fully stocked with blood thanks to people donating in the last two days since we heard that Israeli forces were going to attack," the doctor said.
"We have increased the workload for our emergency teams. We cancelled all elective surgery. Our operating room has been ready for two days now only for emergencies," Mussa added.
Gunmen prowling streets
For days Palestinian militants have been spoiling for a fight, erecting earthen mounds across thoroughfares and sealing off the entrances to refugee camps in parts of Gaza as Israel amassed troops.
In Rafah, gunmen with Kalashnikovs prowled the streets in the balmy night as six hooded militants from the armed wing of the governing Palestinian faction Hamas, laden with homemade landmines, walked past the hospital.
For residents, it was a torturous waiting game. Much of the Gaza Strip sat up through the night waiting for a massive Israeli attack that never came.
Israel 'entering a hornet's nest'
Although there were no initial reports of any attacks on Israeli troops, militant leaders and officials from Palestinian factions threatened an unrelenting battle using significantly more firepower than in the past.
"The Israelis will pay a huge price," said Abu al-Majed, a spokesperson for the Fatah Hawks, a militant offshoot of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement.
"They will be entering a hornet's nest if they come again."
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