Gaza City Counts the Dead

Elsewhere, five United Nations facilities were, according to Ging, deliberately targeted, not counting many others that suffered collateral damage from air strikes nearby. In none of those cases, he said, was there any evidence that the U.N. facilities were being used to attack the Israelis, as Israel Defense Forces spokesmen claimed. Ging said he had direct liaison contacts with ranking IDF officers, who disputed their own spokesmen, acknowledging to him that no U.N. facilities had been used to attack the army.

Ging said there may have been instances elsewhere where Hamas militants used civilians as human shields, but that still doesn't justify the level of destruction. "The laws of war set out very clearly the proportional use of force and then the duty of care [to survivors]. The use of human shields may well be the case but that carries with it a duty of care; that doesn't release you from your responsibility to them." Ging called for an independent, international investigation of actions on both sides of the conflict. "This whole thing was a test of our humanity. Nowhere was safe for these poor people. We failed all of those who died," he said. "Now we have to restore their faith in the rule of law, it has to be proven to the Palestinian people that there will be accountability for atrocities…otherwise we will just push them toward the extremists."

At Shifa Hospital, the parking lot was jammed with ambulances ferrying the dead to its morgue. There were also five ambulances that were badly mangled from air strikes, including one in which four doctors had been killed, according to Dr. Rashid. Sitting at the triage desk he was, by his own admission, a nervous wreck, unable to sit still, his knees twitching at an alarming rate as he rattled off the day's statistics. Of the 98 bodies brought in, 60 percent were women or children, and 10 percent elderly victims, Rashid said. The only other day with a higher death toll was the first day of the conflict, which caught many people by surprise and unprepared. "This was a very very very bad day," Dr. Rashid said. "Too many people were coming in with psychic trauma after going and finding bodies under the rubble." One man, he said, went home to discover the mangled body parts of five relatives he didn't know had still been there. Updated casualty counts from Gaza's other half-dozen hospitals were not yet available today, so the final death toll—now more than 1,300—may climb still higher as the rubble of Gaza gives up the remainder of its victims.

© 2009