from The Herald
"Abu Salah died, his wife died. Abu Tawfiq died, his son died, his wife also died. Mohammed Ibrahim died, and his mother died. Ishaq died and Nasar died. The wife of Nael Samouni died.
"Many people died," said Ahmed Ibrahim Samouni, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy who was wounded but survived an alleged Israeli shelling of a house in north Gaza on Monday.
At least 30 people are feared killed in the attack on the house, which happened a day after the Israeli army is alleged to have told about 100 civilians to shelter there.
Speaking from his hospital bed in Gaza, Ahmed said his family had been ordered into a house in Zeitoun the day before.
"We were asleep when the tanks and the planes struck, we all slept in one room," Ahmed said. "One shell hit our house. Thank God we were not hit. We ran out of the house and saw 15 men they landed from helicopters on rooftops of buildings."
Soldiers beat residents and forced them all into one house, he said.
However, the house they supposed would provide shelter was hit the next day and Ahmed's mother was killed. He kept Yacoub, 11, and two younger brothers alive and tried to help the injured adults lying among the dead.
"There was no water, no bread, nothing to eat," he said. "I got up on my own. I had my wound tied and I got up to get them water from outside, trying to hide from tanks and planes. I went to our neighbours and called on them until I almost fainted. I brought a gallon of water."
Yacoub said he went to "check on my mum and found her dead, and my brothers next to her. My older brother Mohamad was also dead, and the youngest one, he was in my mother's lap."
Rescuers and a team from the Red Cross reached the house on Wednesday after being denied access by the Israeli military for what the Red Cross called an "unacceptable" period.
A Palestinian medic said the team had called out for survivors and heard the voices of children. "We broke down the door and entered and they were four injured children on the ground, and between them there were 16 martyrs dead," Khaled Abu Zayed said.
The children were starving and too weak to stand, the Red Cross said. "One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses," said the charity.
An Israeli army spokesman denied that Israeli troops had ordered civilians into the house the day before the building was struck.
"The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) did not mass people into any specific building," Jacob Dallal said. "Furthermore, we checked with regard to IDF fire on the fifth Monday. The IDF did not target any building in or near Zeitoun on the fifth."
Jessica Montel, of the Israeli human rights organisation B'TSelem, said she was still awaiting an IDF account of the alleged incident. "We don't have an explanation from the IDF about their behaviour in Zeitoun, neither why the Samouni compound was shelled in the first place nor why ambulances were not able to reach the wounded."
The UN's top human rights official called for investigations into possible war crimes by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: "Incidents such as this must be investigated because they display elements of what could constitute war crimes.
"There is an international obligation on the part of soldiers in their position to protect civilians, not to kill civilians indiscriminately in the first place, and when they do to make sure that they help the wounded. In this particular case these children were helpless and the soldiers were close by."
About 257 children are thought to have been killed and 1080 wounded in Gaza in the past two weeks, or one in three of all victims, according to the UN.
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