A whole town “Khuzaa” destroyed by the IOF

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[ 07/08/2014 - 02:39 PM ]

A 10 days attack on the Gaza southern town of Khuzaa by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) left whole streets flattened, once-grand mosque domes reduced to rubble while slain bodies and the stench of decay spread everywhere. The IOF soldiers invaded the town of Khuzaa on Wednesday July 22, amid heavy shelling that leveled much of the town’s buildings and resulted in more than 70 martyrs and over 300 wounded. One man recalled counting 360 shells that slammed into the town in a single hour. While the citizens were checking their houses, the civil defense crews were collecting the dead bodies The civil defense continued for days searching for martyrs, while the Israeli army continued to fire its artillery shells at the area. On the 1st of August, fifty-one bodies buried under the rubble or otherwise previously inaccessible were recovered. Israel deliberately shot at Palestinians as they tried to flee their homes and village. At the entrance to the town, near the local council's "Bon Voyage Khuzaa" sign that was lying crumpled in bits, was a wheelchair that belonged to a crippled woman whom the Israeli soldiers killed in cold blood while she was trying to escape the shelling. The shelling of Khuzaa in effect ended any hopes that families would be able to move back to the village in the near future. Hamdan Abu Rujaila (60) who lost 13 of his relatives in addition to his house during the massacre said: "Khuzaa was completely destroyed. The town is now uninhabitable." The occupation has also targeted and destroyed the electricity and telephone networks as well as the water tanks in the town. The damage underlined the scale of the reconstruction effort that will be required when this conflict is over. "We don't have anything. No money, nothing. If we had a tent we would consider ourselves lucky," another citizen from the town said. Despite the size of the destruction, the citizen Amer Radwan stressed: "This is our land. We will rebuild what was destroyed by the occupation and we will never walk away from our town."