MIDDLE EAST: Awad Abu Salmiah (19) lay in a small ward covered in bandages, drifting in and out of consciousness. He looked around but did not seem to notice the absence of his parents or brothers and sisters.
He was dug out of the remains of his two-storey house yesterday morning, four hours after a bomb crumpled the building. He does not know that almost all his family is dead.
Nabil Abu Salmiah (45) and his wife, Salwah (38), were killed along with two sons and five daughters, aged from four to 18. Awad and his brother, Mohammed (23) were saved when they were awakened by aircraft and went to the balcony to see what was happening. Mohammed was thrown from the balcony; Awad was trapped by falling masonry which left him badly cut and bruised.
A spokesman for the Israeli army said they did not know there was a family in the house when they bombed it. They said they were trying to kill a group of Hamas militants led by Mohammed Deif, who they have tried to assassinate three times.
The targets were not in the house when it was hit. The spokesman said they had spotted two cars driving away from the area, fired missiles at one and lost the other.
Statements from Hamas suggested Israel was correct in believing that the men had been in the area. Some were believed to have been injured as they drove away and were being treated secretly.
The family were the latest victims in Israel's three-pronged Gaza campaign aimed at securing the release of Cpl Gilad Shalit, captured on June 25th.
The death toll is more than 60 Palestinians, including at least 14 civilians. Yesterday the Israeli army reoccupied some of the former settlements it left last year. Around 40 tanks held a line from the Kissufim checkpoint, west to the sea.
Soldiers took over houses along the route and set up sniper positions, preventing any correspondence between two halves of Gaza. Palestinian radio reported that five men had been killed by Israelis in the area.
Yusri Abu Salmiah (40), whose brother was killed in the bombing, said Nabil, a lecturer at the Islamic University, had been a supporter of Hamas but he knew nothing of meetings being hosted in his house or garden. "My nephew told me that the whole family was fast asleep apart from him and his brother and this is why they were killed," he said. The nine family members were buried by thousands of mourners who paraded through Gaza City.
Five of the bodies were carried on stretchers, which is normal, but four were placed in boxes because they were so badly dismembered. About 40 other people were injured, three of them critically. - (Guardian service)