Flechettes are 3.5cm-long steel darts, sharply pointed at the front, with four fins at the rear.
Between 5,000 and 8,000 of these darts are packed into shells which are generally fired
from tanks. The shells explode in the air and scatter the flechettes in a conical pattern over
an area about 300m by 100m.65 Flechette rounds are designed to be used against massed
infantry attacks or squads of troops in the open and obviously pose a very high risk to
civilians when fired in densely populated civilian residential areas.
The first reported use of flechettes during Operation “Cast Lead” was in the morning of 4
January 2009, when a flechette shell was fired at an ambulance in Beit Lahia, in northern
Gaza....
...Clearly marked ambulances with flashing emergency lights and paramedics wearing
recognizable fluorescent vests were repeatedly fired upon as they attempted to rescue the
wounded and collect the dead. Such attacks intensified after Israeli ground forces took
positions inside Gaza on 3 January 2009. Palestinian ambulance crews tried as best they
could to reach as many of the wounded and the dead as possible. They and the international
volunteers who accompanied some of the ambulance crews risked their lives every day to
carry out their mission....
...Three paramedics – Anas Fadhel Na’im, Yaser Kamal Shbeir and Raf’at Abd al-‘Al – were
killed in the early afternoon of 4 January in Gaza City as they walked towards two wounded
men. A 12-year-old boy, Omar Ahmad al-Barade’e, who was showing them where the
wounded men were, was killed in the same strike....
...At the spot where the paramedics and the child were killed, Amnesty International delegates
found pieces of the paramedics’ fluorescent vests strewn on the ground and stuck on trees,
and remnants of at least two Hellfire missiles, which are usually launched from helicopters.
The label read “guided missile, surface attack” and the USA is cited as the weapon’s country
of origin.68
On 4 January, another ambulance crew was attacked in Beit Lahia, in the north of Gaza. In
mid-morning the ambulance had answered a call to rescue several young men, some injured
and some dead, who were in Abu ‘Obeida Street after an Israeli strike. The ambulance was
staffed by driver Khaled Yousef Abu Sa’ada, 43, and two paramedics, 26-year-old Ala’
Usama Sarhan and 34-year-old Arafa Hani ‘Abd al-Dayem, a father of four and a science
teacher by profession, who had been volunteering with the emergency services for eight years.
Driver Khaled Yousef Abu Sa’ada told Amnesty International: “We came about 15 minutes
after the missile strike. None of those lying in the road had any weapon; they were just
civilians, all young men; their bodies were scattered, not together. The paramedics picked up
the first injured man and put him in the ambulance; then they picked up a second man and
were transferring him from the stretcher to the ambulance when the shell hit the ambulance.
Arafa fell, badly injured and the patient had his head and legs blown off.”
The head of the tank shell went straight
through the ambulance and lodged in
the engine. The shell was a flechette
shell, which, on explosion, fired several
thousand small but deadly metal darts
over a large area. The two paramedics,
Arafa and Ala’, were both seriously
wounded and Arafa died later that day....
...Dr ‘Issa ‘Abd al-Rahim Saleh, a 32-year-old doctor, was killed on 12 January while
attempting to rescue three residents of al-Banna Tower, a six-storey apartment building in a
narrow street off Zarqa Street in Jabalia, northern Gaza. The building had been shelled at
4.10pm, killing a woman and gravely injuring her sister and a neighbour. Ambulances from
several services arrived at the building shortly after, including the civil defence, the military
medical services and the PRCS. Dr Saleh and a paramedic, Ahmad Abdel Bari Abu Foul,
went up the stairs, both wearing red fluorescent medical jackets. They found two dead
women, Ferial and Ayat Kamal al-Banna, and a wounded man, Mustapha Jum’a al-Basha.
They placed him on the stretcher and began to descend the stairs. The stairs of the buildings
were well lit by a window running down the length of the building. A shell or missile struck Dr
Saleh, cutting off his head, which fell on paramedic Ahmad Abu Foul, who was a few steps
below holding the other end of the stretcher...
...After Israeli ground forces took positions inside Gaza on 3 January 2009, they routinely
prevented ambulances and other vehicles from reaching the wounded or from collecting
bodies anywhere near their positions. Requests by the Palestinian ambulance services to be
allowed passage to rescue the wounded and the dead in any area in Gaza which had been
taken over by Israeli forces were consistently denied by the Israeli army....
...Faris Tal’at Hammouda, aged three, and his brother Muhammad, 15, died of their wounds on
11 January 2009 after their home, in the Shaikh ‘Ajlin area, south of Gaza City, was struck
by Israeli tank shells and ambulances were not allowed to rescue them. Their parents, Tal’at
As’ad Sa’adi Hammouda, aged 53, a director in the Ministry of Social Affairs, and his wife,
Intisar Abd al-Wahhab Ibrahim Hammouda, 38, could do nothing and watched them die...
...The Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of
12 August 1949 (Fourth Geneva Convention) obliges states to respect and protect the
wounded, to allow the removal from besieged areas of the wounded or sick, and the passage
of medical personnel to such areas. The deliberate obstruction of medical personnel to
prevent the wounded receiving medical attention may constitute “wilfully causing great
suffering or serious injury to body or health”, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva
Convention, and a war crime....
