As rifts continue, Gazans pay price in innocent lives
The smell of smoke hangs in the air, and the scorched walls and blackened floor of the empty room speak to the depth of the tragedy that occurred here.
Three children, Nadine, 7, Farah, 6 and Sabre, 3, died in this room when a candle they were using for light started a fire that burnt so fiercely that by the time their mother - who fell asleep feeding her baby in a nearby room - was able to raise the alarm, it was too late to save them.
It is now five days later and a large group of men gather outside the modest two-storey house in the southern Gaza neighbourhood of Deir Balah, the children's grieving father, Riad Bashir, among them.
Inside, their 29-year-old mother, Nehad, is surrounded by her close female relatives as she too sits in mourning, holding her surviving seven-month-old daughter, Reema, tightly to her chest.
Frozen in their grief, the Bashir family knows their children fell victim to Gaza'sJ long-running power crisis, where the tiny coastal strip's 1.5 million residents have been without power for 18 hours a day during the past two months and suffered electricity shortages for years.
Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/as-rifts-continue-gazans-pay-price-in-innocent-lives-20120413-1wynv.html#ixzz1sA4vFeny
