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SvennoJ on 31 May 2024
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Palestinian girl, 11, tells of surviving 2 days under rubble following Israeli attack

Palestinian child rights organisation Defense for Children has shared a video interview with 11-year-old Rimas, who speaks about surviving under the rubble of her house for two days following an Israeli attack.

Rimas recounts how an Israeli tank drove over the ruins of her destroyed home after it was bombed by Israeli forces, leaving her trapped underground with her family.

“We were sitting quietly in our house. Then the house was bombed. We found the wall above our heads. We stayed under the rubble for two days without food or water. We expected to die under the rubble,” Rimas said.

“We didn’t expect the tanks to come,” said the injured 11-year-old, who is now among the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

“After they bombed our house, the tanks approached us. The soldiers started shooting over our house. The tank drove over the house rubble. We made a small hole in the wall and we barely got out. Soldiers laughed at us and told us to move forward, neither to the right or the left,” she added.



Israeli military announces deaths of 2 more soldiers in Gaza

In a statement, the Israeli military said the deceased are a 24-year-old major in the 6828th patrol battalion and a 20-year-old sergeant in the Givati ​​Patrol.

It said the two men were killed in combat in Gaza on Thursday, without providing further details. Another sergeant from the Givati ​​Patrol was also “seriously injured”.

Their deaths mean that at least 294 Israeli soldiers have now died during Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza, according to the latest data citied in Israeli media reports.

WHO mourns 2 Red Crescent paramedics slain in Rafah

The World Health Organization has expressed its condolences to the families of two Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics who were killed by Israeli forces in Rafah.

In a post on social media, the WHO said healthcare “is not a target”, adding that “health workers are protected under international humanitarian law and must always be able to safely perform their duties”.

The PRCS said its staff members, Haitham Tubasi and Suhail Hassouna, were deliberately targeted by Israeli warplanes as they were in their ambulance responding to the needs of people in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan area.

Their deaths bring to 19 the number of PRCS killed in Gaza by Israeli forces since the start of the latest conflict in October.


Red Crescent paramedic says slain colleagues ‘directly targeted’ by Israeli forces

Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedic Ashraf Abu Labda was first on the scene of the attack by an Israeli warplane on an ambulance that killed his two colleagues in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood on Thursday.

Labda said PRCS ambulances were responding to reports of dead and wounded in the area when they were attacked.

“We received a signal about the presence of martyrs and wounded at the Abu Saeed Crossroads in Tal as-Sultan, Rafah,” Labda said in a video interview.

“Two PRCS ambulances were dispatched to the scene. One of the ambulances was directly targeted. Later, we received a signal from the other ambulance prompting us to head to the location to support them,” he said.

“We found the ambulance on fire. My colleague and I attempted to extinguish the fire, but we were heavily targeted by the shooting of the [Israeli forces]. Given the gravity of the situation, we were forced to withdraw from the area,” he said.

“Despite the immense difficulty and danger, we managed to evacuate the martyrs,” he added.


Members of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) mourn two fellow paramedics, who according to medics, were killed when an ambulance on a mission to rescue people was hit in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, on May 30