Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist based in Cairo. He is a Democracy Now! correspondent and a Puffin Fellow at The Nation Institute.
“I saw a massacre,” says one survivor, “There were heads off bodies, shoulders half torn, hands gone, chests opened.”
At least sixteen Palestinian refugees seeking shelter were killed, more than 200 were wounded.
Two weeks of conflict made crossing borders too difficult to arrange in time. They may have had a chance if they had gotten out.
Nearly ninety people were killed by Israeli forces today, most of them in one of Gaza’s poorest and most crowded neighborhoods.
Over 77 percent of the dead are civilians. Every day brings more stories of incomprehensible anguish and loss.
More than 240 Palestinians have been killed in air strikes, nearly 77 percent of them civilians, including almost fifty children.
For months, strikes and other protests have crippled a number of industries. But the new militancy is fragmented and has confined itself to economic grievances.
Amr Hamzawy was one of the few liberals who condemned both the Morsi government’s misrule and the military coup. Now he’s increasingly isolated.