Please come inside. Please see our dead, women cry

Press, 20 September 1982, Page 8

Please come inside. Please see our dead, women cry

By William Foley, an Associated Press photographer who spent two hours in the Sabra camp. Bodies littered the streets of the Sabra refugee camp. Residents told of a massacre by Christian militiamen. The stench of death filled the air.

Survivors were not certain just who did the massacre. Some said the killers used the word "Falangist" and were members of the Lebanese Forces Christian Militia once commanded by Presi-dent-elect Bashir Gemayel. who was .killed last week in a bombing at his Falangist Party offices. Others said they were from the forces of a renegade'Lebanese Army officer. Major Saad Haddad, whose Christian militia forces are based in southern Lebanon.

I counted at least 50 or 60 bodies in the streets and houses.

We had been turned away at the entrance to the camp on Friday (Saturday. N.Z. time) by Christian militiamen. Late this morning, we came back to the entrance and there was no-one to stop our entry.

Piles of rubble and garbage were on both sides of the street as we drove along. We stopped the car about 400 metres into the camp and got out to look around on foot. While- I was in the camp. I saw no Lebanese Army, no Israeli Army, no militiamen.

The first thing that hit me was the women screaming and yelling outside their homes with the death smell all around.

Walking between piles of

garbage. I saw women and kids picking up what little things they could in preparation for leaving the area. Two women were, standing near rubble they said was once their home, wailing and trembling, saying in Arabic. "Please come’ inside. Please see our dead."

They said that Christian militiamen had used bulldozers to cover the bodies of some of the people massacred in the camp. Fifty metres further on were the corpses of two old men lying in the street. Their bodies sitting in the hot sun were not as bloated as other corpses, leading me to believe they were killed early that morning. The attacks apparently began yesterday (early' Saturday morning N.Z.T.) and continued until early today (Saturday even-

ing N.Z.T.). from what the people said. Walking further, more people were in the streets, saying they were trying to get out for fear the killers would come back and finish them all off.

A man on a bicycle passed the corpses, goggled-eyed at the sight. Looking closely at piles of garbage and rubble, I noticed pieces of human bodies sticking out from the rubble — legs, arms, pieces of limbs.

I talked briefly with a young man who said he was Lebanese, and told me that the Christian militiamen were "all crazy." He asserted that he had seen some of the killing and told me that the militiamen had' ordered people into their- homes, where they were gunned

□own. :They told everyone ... that they will be safe." The man said that the gunmen had used the word "Falangist." but he seemed confused about what group they belonged to. I met other journalists who arrived after me. and a group of us walked down one narrow side alley, where we came upon two piles of about 28 corpses. They appeared to have been shot in the head. We walked into another alley where nine bodies were under and around a truck in an area that appeared to be a workshop.

Dr David Grey, of Liverpool. England. ' said that Christian militiamen, whom he did not further identify, had ordered him and 19 other doctors and nurses out of the Gaza Hospital. He said that

the medical workers .were with the World Council of Churches. He said that they had been told to take off their medical garb and were asked if they were Christian.

Dr Grey said that when they replied. “Yes." a militiamen said: "You are dirt, you work for our enemies." Dr Grey said that a man he was sure was an Israeli colonel arrived and took the medical team to the sports stadium, then allowed them to return after warning them that it w-as not a secure area.

"Three weeks ago. we brought a dead hospital back to life," he said. "It's dead now and I don't think anybody is going to bring it back to life."

Other reporters wrote of dozens of bloated corpses of men, women, and children lying strewn in the wreckage

of the two camps. Reporters toured the Shatila camp hours after the militiamen left and sawdozens of bodies, some in heaps, others half-hidden under piles of rubble. In one place, seven men lay dead in a line along the base of a concrete wall.

On Friday (local time) correspondents saw gunmen from Major Haddad's Israelibacked militia and from the Right-wing Christian "Lebanese Forces" organisation grouped outside the Shatila camp.

They had arrived after Israel's invasion of west Beirut and said thev were going to comb the camp.

The Israelis had said that they believed some Palestinian fighters had stayed behind in the camp after the evacuation from Beirut last

month of thousands of their colleagues. After the gunmen had left, the Shatila camp was a wasteland of ruined singlestorey concrete houses. . It was almost deserted. A few women wailed over their dead and young civil defence workers with thick .gauze face masks searched out bodies and started arranging for them to be collected. Under a tree in what had once been the courtyard of a small house was a’ tangled pile of stinking corpses, including those of two children and some women, as well as men.

In a narrow alley, a dead man lay on his side, shot through the head. Flies buzzed around the body and crawled over congealed blood on his shattered skull. In the house next door, a

middle-aged woman lay spreadeagled on her back in a pool of blood. Women who had survived the carnage said that the militiamen burst in on Fridav evening (Saturday morning. N.Z. time) and the last left in the morning (Saturday evening. N.Z.T ).

There appeared to have been some resistance. In a side alley, a dead man lay on his face’ with a shotgun by his side.

Gathered on a military stretcher further up the street was a box of ammunition clips for Kalashnikov assault rifles and some metal magazines for machine-guns.

Survivors said that Israeli troops had not been involved in the sweep through Shatila

camp, which they said had also taken in the adjacent Sabra camp.

WEST BEIRUT, showing the two refugee camps.