Israeli magazine: The cries of those trapped under the rubble in Gaza are disturbing rescue workers Politics news

“I cannot sleep, not even for a minute. I am constantly disturbed by the voices and moans of those trapped under the rubble as they beg us to pull them out.”

This is how Ibrahim Musa (27 years old) from Al-Bureij camp described the center Gaza stripHis life since it began Israel Bomb it. Not only is Musa struggling to survive day after day like everyone else in the besieged Strip, but he is also one of more than 14,000 rescue workers who make up the civil defense teams in Gaza and lead attempts to save the lives of those trapped under the rubble after each air strike. Israeli.

With these words, writer Rouwaida Kamal Amer began a journalistic investigation published by the leftist electronic magazine (972), which is published by Tel Aviv It is run by a group of Israeli and Palestinian journalists.

I’ve never seen anything like this

Although Musa worked in the Civil Defense in Gaza for 5 years – during which he experienced many Israeli attacks on the Strip and periods of relative calm during which his work focused on rescuing people from routine emergency incidents – he has never witnessed anything similar to what is happening now.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 8,000 people are missing since the outbreak of war, the vast majority of whom are believed to be trapped under rubble. It is possible that many of them have died, despite the tireless efforts of civil defense workers – like Musa – who are unable to deal with the extent of the devastation that has recently afflicted Gaza.

Musa explained, “We do not have the necessary equipment to remove the rubble. There is not much we can do, and if the building has several floors, then it will take us long hours and a lot of effort to make any progress.”

When civil defense workers reach the site of destruction, they must quickly try to identify the location of the event they are dealing with. “We usually don’t know who is trapped underground or how many people we are looking for, so we call through the rubble, asking if anyone is alive to tell us how many people were staying in this building,” Musa says.

We keep screaming

Musa adds, “We keep screaming until someone hears us. Sometimes we get an immediate response, but many times we only hear our groaning, and we try to follow it in order to save these people.”

One of the situations that rescue workers are accustomed to facing in Gaza is trying to calm children trapped under the rubble of their homes. Musa continues, saying, “Children are screaming from under the rubble, asking about their family members. Sometimes we lie to them and tell them that everyone is fine so that they will not be shocked. Other times they scream to tell us that a family member who was lying next to them was martyred.”

Musa often feels that he and his colleagues are fighting a losing battle. “It is not about bombing one or two houses, but entire residential complexes. An entire area is wiped out, becoming one pile of rubble. This requires us to dig with our hands to extract the wounded who are still alive. We are trying to be careful, because the rubble is heavy.” “On their bodies, it may mean that we may harm them, or even cause them to lose limbs, while trying to save them.”

They intentionally kill civilians

Ruwayda interviews another member of the Civil Defense, Ahmed Abu Khudair, from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, who describes the war as “more severe and violent” than all previous Israeli attacks on the Strip. In fact, he believes that the Israeli army is striving to inflict as much harm as possible on the civilian population.

Civil defense workers themselves are not immune to Israeli attacks. At least 32 people have been killed since the beginning of the war, including 7 members of Abu Khdeir’s team, who believe this killing did not happen by mistake.

Abu Khudair says that the occupation forces deliberately target civil defense and ambulance teams. He added, “I was injured while working in a house that was bombed in the south of the Gaza Strip. We recovered the bodies of three martyrs, and saved a number of the wounded, but the house was bombed again. When I went up to the roof of one of the neighboring houses to search for people, we were hit by two more missiles.”

Two legs stuck

One particularly devastating incident that remains etched in Abu Khudair’s memory came in the wake of a midnight bombing near a gas station in the town of Qarara in the southern Gaza Strip. He recalled, “I went to the site and at first I could not find any victims. Then I heard moaning and headed towards the sound. I dug through the rubble and found two stuck legs, then I freed them. They were a 12-year-old girl named Aisha.”

The girl told him that 8 members of her family were trapped under the rubble, in addition to other families, including 9 young children.

Despite the best efforts of Abu Khudair and his colleagues, they simply did not have the means to save them. He described that moment as “one of the harshest moments I have ever experienced, which is leaving a place, and I know that there are people alive under the rubble, but you cannot do anything for them, and some of them will inevitably die.”