Tears, bitterness, despair as Gaza "bleeds rivers"

By Nidal Al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - The three little children lying on the floor of the overcrowded morgue looked like sleeping dolls.

"Get up, boy, get up" cried the weeping father, who lost a total of 13 close relatives when an Israeli shell hit his house east of Gaza City.

"Please get up. I am your dad and I need you," he implored helplessly.

The oldest was 4 years old. Their mother was killed too.

Mourning is also dangerous in Gaza.

Jaber Abdel-Dayem was watching over the body of a nephew, a paramedic killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza Strip.

"We were sitting in the mourning tent when suddenly they bombed us, we ran to rush the casualties to hospital but they bombed again," he said.

He did not really know if it was bombing or tank fire.

Medics said three people were killed and 17 wounded.

Abdel-Dayem stood beside their bodies.

"Those include my son, my nephew, my cousin. Oh God," he cried as tears started from his eyes.

His wife was there, either defiant or in shock.

"We are steadfast, we are steadfast," she kept saying.

Abdel-Dayem said all the Palestinian rockets fired by its Islamist Hamas rulers into neighboring Israel were as nothing compared to one Israeli bomb.

"They (Israel's leaders) must be brought before international courts," he said. "May God punish the Arab rulers who are silently watching us bleed like rivers."