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http://onuma.cocolog-nifty.com/blog1/2006/07/post_1b42.html
レバノン南部に踏みとどまり、レポートを続ける英紙ガーディアンの女性記者、スザンヌ・ゴールドバーグ記者が、殺戮地帯を化した現地の実情を伝えて来た。
7月25日付けの同紙電子版で、彼女がタイル発で新たに報じたのは、23日の日曜日の夜の、イスラエル軍のヘリによる、レバノン赤十字社の救急車2台に対するミサイル攻撃。
救急車はいずれも赤十字旗を照明でライトアップしながら走行していたにもかかわらず、イスラエル軍は上空からミサイルを狙い撃ちした。
これにより救急車は2台とも全壊、救急隊員6人が負傷、救急車で運ばれていたファザスさん一家の3人も攻撃を受けた。
ファザスさん一家の3人は、点滴をうちながら搬送される、80歳になるジャミアおばあちゃんと、その息子である一家の主人、アーメドと、そのまた息子で、ジャミアさんからみれば孫にあたる、14歳のモハメド君。
アメードさんはミサイルの破片を腹部に受け、片足も吹き飛んだ。モハメド君も足の一部を失い、ジャミアさんも体中に破片を浴びた。
現場からの無線で、救急隊員からの「ミサイル攻撃を受けた」との知らせは、タイルのレバノン赤十字の入ったのは、午後10時ごろのこと。ミサイル被弾から2分後のことだった。
早速、詰め所から救急車が出動し、現場で負傷者らを収容し、タイルに戻った。
その時点ですでにアーメドさんは意識不明の重態に陥っていた。
全員がボランティアで救援活動にあたるレバノン赤十字社の救急車は、イスラエルの退去期限が切れた22日夜以降、レバノン南部に取り残された人々の最後の頼みの綱となっていたが、その道も今回の無差別攻撃で閉ざされた。
負傷した救急隊員のひとりはこう言った。
「赤十字の救急車を、それも2台も誤認するわけはない」
(大沼・注)
ボランティアで決死の活動にあある救急隊員らとともに、現場に残って報道を続けるスザンヌ記者の健闘と無事を祈ろう!
⇒
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1828142,00.html
Red Cross ambulances destroyed in Israeli air strike on rescue mission
· Volunteer paramedics demand UN guarantees
· Flags and lights prove no protection for aid teams
Suzanne Goldenberg in Tyre
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian
The ambulance headlamps were on, the blue light overhead was flashing, and another light illuminated the Red Cross flag when the first Israeli missile hit, shearing off the right leg of the man on the stretcher inside. As he lay screaming beneath fire and smoke, patients and ambulance workers scrambled for safety, crawling over glass in the dark. Then another missile hit the second ambulance.
Even in a war which has turned the roads of south Lebanon into killing zones, Israel's rocket strike on two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances on Sunday night set a deadly new milestone.
Six ambulance workers were wounded and three generations of the Fawaz family, being transported to hospital from Tibnin with what were originally minor injuries, were left fighting for their lives. Two ambulances were entirely destroyed, their roofs pierced by missiles.
The Lebanese Red Cross, whose ambulance service for south Lebanon is run entirely by volunteers, immediately announced it would cease all rescue missions unless Israel guaranteed their safety through the United Nations or the International Red Cross.
For the villages below the Litani river, the ambulances were their last link to the outside world. Yesterday, that too was gone, leaving the 100,000 people of Tyre district with no way of reaching hospital other than to take to the roads themselves, under the roar of Israeli war planes.
The fateful call to the Red Cross operations room came through at about 10pm - well after dark, a time when almost no Lebanese now dare venture out.
At the Red Cross office in Tyre, three volunteer medics dressed in their orange overalls, and got into their ambulance. The plan was to drive halfway, meet the local ambulance, and transfer the three patients to their vehicle to return to Tyre.
By Nader Joudi's reckoning, the ambulances had been stopped for barely two minutes. Two patients had been loaded: Ahmed Mustafa Fawaz, who had been hit by shrapnel in the stomach, and his son, Mohammed, 14. The volunteer attendant was just easing Jamila Fawaz, 80, inside and setting up a drip when the missile struck. He managed to get the old woman and the child outside, but there was no way to reach Mr Fawaz. "It was horrible," Mr Joudi said. "He was screaming, and we couldn't do anything."
One of the members of the three-man crew from Tibnin radioed for help when another missile plunged through the roof. Ambulance crew and patients retreated to the cellar of a nearby building, then waited to be rescued, trying as best as they could to help the injured. "Each of us treated ourselves. There was no light," said Kassem Shaalan, a medic from Tyre.
By the time patients and ambulance crew reached Tyre, Mr Fawaz was unconscious after losing one leg, and suffering severe fractures to the other. His son had lost part of a foot, and his mother's body was riddled with shrapnel. Mr Joudi had shrapnel wounds in his left arm, and Mr Shaalan cuts to the face and leg.
He was adamant that the ambulances, with their Red Cross insignia on the roof, were clearly visible from the air. "I don't think there can be a mistake in two bombings of two ambulances," he said.
Although the air strike marked the first time ambulances have been hit by Israel in this war, for Mr Shaalan and the other Red Cross volunteers it was only a matter of time. After two weeks of strikes designed to choke off possible supply lines to Hizbullah guerrillas, travel to many villages was just too dangerous. Coastal villages even within a few kilometers of Tyre are cut off. In some, corpses remain trapped in the rubble for days.
But nothing is more perilous than travelling by night, and no more so than just before midnight that Sunday when another Red Cross crew set off from Tyre to pick up their injured colleagues.
"I was trembling," said Ali Deeb, one of the volunteers on the mission. "It was too dangerous, and helicopters buzzing, and all through this, I am thinking one thing: the ambulance that left half an hour before you has already been injured, and you could be next." Later yesterday afternoon, two missiles landed in the building across the road from the Red Cross office.
The toll
Lebanese
Yesterday
Civilian deaths 8
Hizbullah deaths 0
Since outbreak
Military deaths 66
Civilian deaths 377
Wounded 1,550+
Israeli
Yesterday
Civilian deaths 0
Military deaths 4
Since outbreak
Military deaths 24
Civilian deaths 17
Wounded 360+
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2006/07/24/coffins256.jpg
Coffins are prepared for mass burial in the Lebanese city of Tyre. Photograph: Nasser Nasser/AP