>This is from The Independent, in the UK.
>
>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=285413
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime
>
>
>
> >From Phil Reeves in Jenin
>
>16 April 2002
>
>
>A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a
>fortnight has finally been exposed. Its troops have caused devastation
>in the centre of the Jenin refugee camp, reached yesterday by The
>Independent, where thousands of people are still living amid the
>ruins.
>
>A residential area roughly 160,000 square yards about a third of a
>mile wide has been reduced to dust. Rubble has been shovelled by
>bulldozers into 30ft piles. The sweet and ghastly reek of rotting
>human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb. The
>people, who spent days hiding in basements crowded into single rooms
>as the rockets pounded in, say there are hundreds of corpses, entombed
>beneath the dust, under a field of debris, criss-crossed with tank and
>bulldozer treadmarks.
>
>In one nearby half-wrecked building, gutted by fire, lies the
>fly-blown corpse of a man covered by a tartan rug. In another we found
>the remains of 23-year-old Ashraf Abu Hejar beneath the ruins of a
>fire-blackened room that collapsed on him after being hit by a
>rocket. His head is shrunken and blackened. In a third, five long-dead
>men lay under blankets.
>
>A quiet. sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis led us across the
>wasteland, littered now with detritus of what were once households,
>foam rubber, torn clothes, shoes, tin cans, children's toys. He
>suddenly stopped. This was a mass grave, he said, pointing.
>
>We stared at a mound of debris. Here, he said, he saw the Israeli
>soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house. When the pile
>was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on
>the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank. We could not
>see the bodies. But we could smell them.
>
>A few days ago, we might not have believed Kamal Anis. But the
>descriptions given by the many other refugees who escaped from Jenin
>camp were understated, not, as many feared and Israel encouraged us to
>believe, exaggerations. Their stories had not prepared me for what I
>saw yesterday. I believe them now.
>
>Until two weeks ago, there were several hundred tightly-packed homes
>in this neighbourhood called Hanat al-Hawashim. They no longer exist.
>
>Around the central ruins, there are many hundreds of half-wrecked
>homes. Much of the camp - once home to 15,000 Palestinian refugees
>from the 1948 war - is falling down. Every wall is speckled and torn
>with bullet holes and shrapnel, testimony of the awesome, random
>firepower of Cobra and Apache helicopters that hovered over the camp.
>
>Building after building has been torn apart, their contents of cheap
>fake furnishings, mattresses, white plastic chairs spewed out into the
>road. Every other building bears the giant, charred, impact mark of a
>helicopter missile. Last night there were still many families and
>weeping children still living amid the ruins, cut off from the
>humanitarian aid. Ominously, we found no wounded, although there was a
>report of a man being rescued from beneath ruins only an hour before
>we arrived.
>
>Those who did not flee the camp, or not detained by the army, have
>spent the bombardment in basements, enduring day after day of
>terror. Some were forced into rooms by the soldiers, who smashed their
>way into houses through the walls. The UN says half of the camp's
>15,000 residents were under 18. As the evening hush fell over these
>killing fields, we could suddenly hear the children chattering. The
>mosques, once so noisy at prayer time, were silent.
>
>Israel was still trying to conceal these scenes yesterday. It had
>refused entry to Red Cross ambulances for nearly a week, in violation
>of the Geneva Convention. Yesterday it continued to try to keep us
>out.
>
>Jenin, in the northern end of the occupied West Bank, remained "a
>closed military zone", was ringed Merkava tanks, army Jeep patrols,
>and armoured personnel carriers. Reporters caught trying to get in
>were escorted out. A day earlier the Israeli armed forces took in a
>few selected journalists to see sanitised parts of the camp. We simply
>walked across the fields, flitted through an olive orchard overlooked
>by two Israeli tanks, and into the camp itself.
>
>We were led in by hands gesturing at windows. Hidden, whispering
>people directed us through narrow alleys they thought were clear. When
>there were soldiers about, a finger would raise in warning, or a hand
>waved us back. We were welcomed by people desperate to tell what had
>occurred. They spoke of executions, and bulldozers wrecking homes with
>people inside. "This is mass murder committed by Ariel Sharon," Jamel
>Saleh, 43, said. "We feel more hate for Israel now than ever. Look at
>this boy." He placed his hand on the tousled head of a little boy,
>Mohammed, the eight-year-old son of a friend. "He saw all this
>evil. He will remember it all." So will everyone else who saw the
>horror of Jenin refugee camp. Palestinians who entered the camp
>yesterday were almost speechless.
>
>Rajib Ahmed, from the Palestinian Energy Authority, came to try to
>repair the power lines. He was trembling with fury and shock. "This is
>mass murder. I have come here to help by I have found nothing but
>devastation. Just look for yourself." All had the same message: tell
>the world.