GAZA CITY
"Let's run away, dad," cried Nidal Abu Gazar, a 23-year-old resident of the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, as he tried to guide his blind father through the rubble of bombed homes.
Having walked the otherwise clear streets and alleys for years, the 65-year-old father could easily feel the heaps of broken bricks, cement and steel under his feet.
"What is all this destruction, boy?" he asked his son as they made their way through the debris of tens of homes and buildings flattened by Israeli warplanes and artillery.
The smell of death wafts through the air in Rafah and fills every corner in the city, which has been reeling under massive Israeli bombing for as many days.
Palestinian rescue team retrieved on Monday 32 bodies from under the rubble of bombed homes, mostly in Rafah.
Residents say rescue workers found bodies wherever they manage to access.
"Children are crying everywhere not knowing where their parents had gone," Abu Gazar said.
"The smell of decaying human bodies is everywhere," he added.
Residents say that even Abu Youssef al-Naggar hospital, Rafah's largest, was shelled by the Israeli army.
Doctors had to evacuate patients, lest the hospital should be targeted yet again.
"Nothing is immune from Israeli shelling in this city," said Sami al-Shaer, another resident.
"Death is lurking behind every wall," he lamented.
Hani al-Shaer, an AA reporter in the city, says the enormity of the destruction wrought by the Israeli war machine is beyond words.
"This is a huge catastrophe," he said.
"The scenes are both shocking and terrifying," added al-Shaer.
He said the homes were brought down with residents still inside.
"Rafah is not anywhere to be found anymore," said one resident who had lost five of his family members to the Israeli shelling. "It is a ghost city."
By Ola Attalah
www.aa.com.tr/en
