Damascus-SANA
Countless crimes have drawn the features of the Israeli occupation and its repeated and continuous attacks for decades...whether in Palestine or Lebanon or in Syria and other countries in the region. A reader in history cannot but mention one of the largest and most brutal of these massacres, which took place in the Lebanese village of Qana and falls today. Her tragic 26th anniversary.
Today, the memory of this massacre coincides with a criminal and provocative escalation of the occupation against the Palestinian people.. It is not strange for this entity to such hostile practices. The first Qana massacre is the best witness to that when it took place on the 18th of April 1996, killing approximately 250 martyrs and wounded civilians, most of whom were from Children The shocking images of the torn body parts and the tragedy and destruction that followed the massacre in the region remain a vivid and indelible image of the brutality of the occupation and the betrayal of the global conscience, which did not move to pressure the governments of the major powers that sponsor and cover up “Israel” crimes.
The Israeli occupation, which launched a two-week aggression against Lebanon between the 11th and the 27th of April 1996, bombed in those days a number of cities and towns, including the capital, Beirut, as part of an operation it called “the Grapes of Wrath.” On the 18th of the same month, it also aimed its cannons. Towards the building of the headquarters of the Fijian battalion of the United Nations Force in Lebanon, after about 800 civilians from several villages in southern Lebanon sought refuge in it to escape the Israeli aggression, which resulted in the death of 11 civilians, including many women and children. Among the victims’ bodies, there were 18 bodies that were not identified due to the severity The disfigurement sustained, while dozens of people sustained injuries, disabilities, and disfigurements in their bodies.
Despite the horror of the crime and the ugliness of the massacre committed by the occupation entity against the innocents in Qana, the international reactions were weak and shameful, as the United States rushed to cover up the crime of its ally, “Israel,” by holding the victims responsible for their refusal to leave their towns after the occupation authorities’ threats to them.
Ten years after the Qana massacre, the occupation entity repeated its aggression against Lebanon in July 2006 and committed a second massacre against the people of the town of Qana when its forces bombed a building where civilians had sought refuge from the aggression, killing more than 55 people and wounding dozens, thus completing its open war and confirming its barbarism. And terrorized him again.
The Qana crime is not the first or the last. The massacres of Sabra, Shatila, Bint Jbeil and others in Lebanon, up to the massacres of Deir Yassin, Qibiya, Khan Yunis, Jerusalem and others in occupied Palestine are still firmly rooted in the minds of all peoples, and they continue today with the brutal practices of the Zionist entity, its killing and displacement against the Palestinian people with Continuous international bias led by Washington and the major colonial powers in favor of "Israel", which increases the severity of its crimes and does not stop them.
Basma Kanon
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