Under the close supervision of the Arab Doctors Union (ADU), Egyptian surgeons have successfully extracted Israeli rocket shrapnel from the body of 4-year-old Lateefa Ghalia, who was critically wounded in an Israeli attack three weeks ago — an attack in which seven of her family members were killed.
The surgeons described the surgery operation as "complicated and critical" — the surgery took five hours to complete. Head of emergency and relief committee in the ADU Dr. Jamal Abdul Salam affirmed, "The ADU will never hesitate to extend medical services to our Palestinian brothers, especially in treating complicated cases such as Lateefa’s case". He elaborated that the kind of injuries the Palestinian children have sustained due to Israeli bombing reflects the "intensity and savageness of Israeli aggression" in Gaza.
TV satellite channels attempted to secure the hospital’s permission to cover the surgery, but the hospital’s administration politely turned down the request, citing the sensitivity of the operation.
Although Israeli officials at first attempted to deny that they were responsible for the assault on the Gaza beach, citing an ‘investigation’ that consisted only of aerial photographs of the beach. The only forensics expert to actually go to the beach and investigate was Mark Garlasco, from Human Rights Watch, who determined that the blast was definitely not from ‘buried munitions’ as the Israeli military spokesman surmised. Garlasco said, "My assessment [is] that it’s likely that this was incoming artillery fire that landed on the beach and was fired by the Israelis from the north of Gaza."
And according to Alex Fishman, Senior security analyst of Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, "The battery that fired the six shells on Friday [June 9] fire an average of more than a thousand shells a week towards the north of the Strip. This means that the battery which has been placed there for four weeks has already fired about 5000 shells."
Israeli forces have fired over 7,500 shells into the Gaza Strip, the most crowded place on earth, over the last month, killing at least 74 Palestinians, and injuring 292, some of them seriously. Human rights groups estimate that 80% of Palestinian casualties are civilians.
