Reports Pour in of Civilians Killed in Israeli Invasion

Overall Toll Not Apparent, But Civilians Increasingly Targeted

by Jason Ditz, January 04, 2009

Israeli troops fire shells into Gaza City’s main shopping district, killing five and injuring dozens. A woman and her four children are killed as the ground invasion begins. Two Gaza boys heating water over a fire are attacked. A missile hits a rural house wounding five, and when relatives seek water for them the soldiers open fire on them. A tank shell hits a house in eastern Gaza City, killing one child and wounding 11 others. 14 members of two other families are killed when their homes are shelled.

While Israeli ground forces pour into the Gaza Strip, civilians are increasingly finding themselves the target of tank shells, ground fire, and artillery. With the government keeping foreign journalists carefully away from the strip, the only news coming out are individual anecdotes like these.

The medics aren’t immune either. Three paramedics were killed and another wounded when an Israeli drone attacked them. Another is reportedly killed when Israel shells a civilian ambulance, and the driver and another medic are also seriously wounded. With Gaza’s hospitals already overwhelmed, mostly with civilians, such attacks only compound the problem, adding to the dead and wounded while removing trained medical personnel which could be caring for them. With foreign medical teams stuck at the Israeli border, the situation seems likely to get worse in the coming days.

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