DISPATCH | LOUISE CALLAGHAN
I don’t know if I can ever wipe this from my brain: at the Gaza church bombed by Israel
Hundreds of people were sheltering when the outer wall was hit
A funeral ceremony for people who died when a bomb hit part of Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City
ALI JADALLAH/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
The Sunday Times
A list in his hand, Rami marked off his friends and neighbours as they were pulled from the rubble of the church building: a tick for the living, a cross for the dead. Children, crushed in the rubble, a woman dressed in a nightgown — friends from church, relatives, all of them part of Gaza’s Christian community.
Now at least 17 of them were dead, killed when an Israeli bomb hit the outer wall of one of the buildings around the 12th century church, where 400 Christians were sheltering from the bombardment on Thursday evening.
“I don’t know if I can ever wipe this image from my brain,” said Rami, 31, who spent a night pulling his neighbours from the rubble and counting the dead.
