JERUSALEM AND SHATI REFUGEE CAMP, GAZA STRIP — Rashan abu Eisha staggered out of the flaming shell of his family's three-story home, covered in dust and cradling his injured 6-year-old son.
Minutes earlier, around 1:30 a.m. Monday, a pair of Israeli missiles had slammed into the base of the building, presumably targeting Abu Eisha's brother Zakaria, a prominent local Hamas commander.
Amid the confusion, the 43-year-old lawyer said, it took him a few minutes to realize that his younger brother Aamer, along with Aamer's two wives and four children, were trapped underneath the rubble in a basement-turned-makeshift bomb shelter.
"I didn't know they had gone down there," said Rashan abu Eisha, lying in an ambulance shortly after the attack, as rescue crews dug through the wreckage. "They must have thought it would be safer."
It took 20 minutes for ambulances and firefighters to arrive, then several hours for rescuers to extinguish the flames and clear away wreckage to reach the basement entrance, which was underneath the building's ground-floor garage. The remnants of a car parked in the garage had come to rest on top of the door, further delaying rescue efforts.
In the end, the delays probably didn't matter; all seven family members were long dead when crews began excavating the bodies at dawn.
"What are the sins of these small children?" asked Abu Eisha, who along with his son suffered minor injuries. "Is this the democracy that America and Israel are always singing about?"
Israeli officials have repeatedly stated that their army is taking pains to avoid civilian casualties in its 11-day offensive and targeting only Hamas militants and infrastructure. The air and ground operation, they say, is solely designed to end the indiscriminate rocket launches by Gaza Strip militants on a widening swath of southern Israel.
But many of Hamas' leaders and facilities are in densely populated urban areas where they are intermingled with the civilian population.
Some airstrikes have targeted homes of Hamas officials and other homes and several mosques, which Israel says are being used as weapons warehouses and hiding places for militant commanders. Several Israeli officials have recently stated their belief that hospitals are also being used for a similar purpose, although none of them has been targeted.
