Gaza City

Living amongst the dead in Gaza



The scene of Mahmoud Jilu, four years old, rolling his ball with friends doesn’t seem weird at all until you see where he is playing. Mahmoud runs after the ball into a backyard full of graves forming the cemetery where his family has lived since they can remember. The six-member Jilu family are all jammed together in a tiny house with one bedroom and a small space for the kitchen with a tomb next to it. 

It was like "The Day After"



Since last night from about 8pm until a little while ago, there have been heavy battles in Tel al-Hawa. They were hitting from the sea, from the air. Tanks were shooting. There were thick clouds of white phosphorus filling the area and filling up houses. They bombed the Red Crescent building and many cars in the street were destroyed. An apartment near me was hit and burned and one on the other side. A number of tall buildings were hit. All the windows and doors are broken and shattered. There were maybe 10 bombs falling every minute. 

Fueling disaster



At the bus stop at Palestine Square, in the bustling heart of Gaza City, 25-year-old Said Ramadan cried to passersby, “Fuel, fuel, fuel! Come and buy!” Last week Ramadan took advantage of the blasting through of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt and the brief respite from months of siege to travel to the nearby Egyptian town of al-Arish and stock up on gallons of fuel. Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza. 

Hajj pilgrims stranded in Egypt



“We are in a prison. Our situation is so miserable in the arena the Egyptian authorities have placed us in. Yesterday a 45-year-old woman pilgrim died in front of us,” says Nayef al-Khaldi. The 55-year-old al-Khaldi is stuck at an arena turned into a shelter at the Egyptian border town at al-Arish along with more than 1,100 other Palestinians following the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza. 

"No fuel, no gasoline, no benzene"



With the majority of gas stations closed in Gaza due to the escalating fuel crisis, a group of local Gaza taxi drivers shared the fuel in their cars’ tanks, for the sake of going back home, rather than earning a living under already dire economic conditions. Majed Abu Sam’an, a driver of a Hyundai taxi minibus, was parked along with other drivers in mid-day Tuesday, 4 December 2007, siphoning gasoline from his car’s tank into that of another. “We are helping him so he can go back home, as he has been stuck here in Gaza City since the early hours of morning. We went to all the gas stations but they were closed, no fuel to buy,” says Abu Sama’an. Rami Almeghari reports for EI

Gaza's children deserve life



Places of entertainment in Gaza are few and far between compared with other parts of the world. While the atmosphere in Gaza is becoming more depressed and the economy is crumbling, Gaza’s population was nevertheless determined to celebrate the major Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr. EI contributor Rami Almeghari writes from the Gaza Strip. 

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