'We are almost dead. We have no money, nothing'

[ProgressiveMuslim]

In the third part of our series on Gaza, Rory McCarthy talks to Ahmad Abu Me'tiq, who lost his wife and four of his children in an Israeli air strike



Her bed is on the third floor of Gaza's Shifa hospital, where shafts of warm afternoon sunshine reach in from the window. The ward is crowded, and the bed on which Asma'a Abu Me'tiq lay is curtained off from the rest and surrounded by the blankets her sister-in-law uses when she sleeps on the floor next to her at night.

It may be the best hospital in Gaza but even the poorest families, like the Abu Me'tiqs, must provide extra food themselves. Asma'a's father, Ahmad, returns from downstairs with a cheap electric hot-plate, which he bought on credit from a shopkeeper he knows. He plugs it into the wall to heat a pot of thin homemade soup for his 13-year-old daughter, but there is either no electricity or the hot-plate didn't work. "What bad luck," he says quietly to himself.

Then he reaches over to his daughter, who is coughing and struggling to breathe from the deep wound in her chest. She hasn't touched her food since she was rushed to hospital 10 days earlier: the day an explosion in the street outside demolished the metal front door of their house as the family were eating breakfast, impaling her and her younger sister, Shaima, seven, with shrapnel and killing outright four other brothers and sisters and her mother too.

"I'm waiting to see you eat," says her father. "Later," says Asma'a. Several minutes passed. "Let me see you eat," he says again. "Tomorrow," she replies

read on, if you can..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/14/gaza

[AnOhioan]

1. Most of the posters here.....

will never bother to read the linked article. It does not fit their bias.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AnOhioan]

4. Your attempt at humor is

lacking...for that matter so is your power of reasoning.

[sabbat hunter]

2. I wonder

how much better off the Palestinian people would be if Hamas spent all the money they have on the Palestinians instead of on rockets, bombs against Israel.

That being said, it is a complete tragedy when any civilian is hurt and I wish all the violence would stop.