Situation in which Caoimhe B. was Shot. Excerpt from Interview

Friday November 22, 2002 19:59

by Blisset

I know this is reposted from a comment but deserves to be read -

"I've been living in Jenin camp for the last few months and there was a re-invasion of the camp this morning from about five o'clock onwards.

The Israeli occupation forces are saying that they were looking for one wanted man in particular, but they closed off the bottom area of the camp - it's a closed military zone. There were house-to-house searches going on and around 20 men were rounded up in those searches and were beaten very severely, handcuffed and blindfolded. I received a call from the family of one of them in that zone where nobody was allowed out on to the streets, saying that a young girl needed medical attention, that she was very sick and they were asking if we could try and bring an ambulance in, because the Israelis had refused to co-ordinate with them. So I made my way down from where I live at the top of the camp to the bottom and when I arrived there I was arrested immediately with a cameraman from Reuters for entering a closed military zone and handcuffed and held with the group of 20 men for about two hours. I was then released and I was told that if I didn't leave the area that I would be shot . We managed eventually to get an ambulance in to evacuate the girl and then I went up to another part of the camp where there were clashes going on, between stone-throwing kids and Israeli soldiers. When I got there, the kids told me that a nine-year-old had just been killed and three had been shot - one was brain-damaged. I tried to negotiate with the soldiers because they were still shooting at kids, they were basically shooting live ammunition at them and I started engaging in some negotiation soldier and then another tank drove up, the guy looked out of his hatch and he opened fire on a crowd of kids. Most of them managed to run away, but there were around three small ones left on the road, so I was trying to basically carry them into an alleyway and then I got shot myself."

From Interview with Caoimhe Butterly