HIGHLIGHTS:Neutral Sustained Investigation, Needed.
Thousands Unaccounted For.
Magnitude of Destruction Unassailable Reality.
The Sharon Sabra Shatilla Connection.
(Read photo caption within).

STORY: Israel has apparently succeeded in obliterating immediate reliable evidence of the massacre Palestinians reported following a fierce battle for control of Jenin and its neighbouring refugee camp. An independent sustained international investigation in needed to determine exactly what happened at Jenin's refugee camp.

By the time aid workers and journalists were allowed into the camp for the first time Monday, over a week since the battle was reported over, the task of verifying the reported atrocities was too vast for one organization, the Red Cross, to do.

TOO LATE FOR A RELIABLE LAYMAN'S ENQUIRY

Gesturing toward mountains of wreckage strewn with dust-covered belongings: books, shoes, and cooking pots, Jessica Barry of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who was in the camp on Tuesday said, "How can you assess something like this?" said, "It's too vast for one organization to do."

Aid workers added that they have not yet brought the equipment needed to dig through the giant piles of wreckage. Illustrating the dangers, a huge slab of concrete hanging by twisted metal rods from the side of a half-collapsed building slammed to the ground as journalists talked to a man nearby.

They said neither a close visual inspection of the ruined center of the camp, nor many conversations with residents, nor interviews with aid workers could substantiate how many people died in the camp.

THOUSANDS UNACCOUNTED FOR

The Palestinians say thousands of people are unaccounted for in the camp and that hundreds could be dead beneath dozens of wrecked buildings in the middle of the camp. Mohammed Rashid, a senior adviser to Yasser Arafat, told CNN there were more than 3,000 people missing.

"We are not saying everyone was killed, we are not saying all of them are injured, but definitely some of them are killed," he said. "We just don't know where they are." Other Palestinian officials have put the likely death toll in the hundreds.
The recovery effort has barely begun. The Red Crescent said seven bodies were brought out Monday, its first day of operations inside the camp, and one other was recovered Tuesday. The putrefying remains of at least four corpses could be seen Tuesday in the camp's center - including a twisted, burned body on the steps inside one shot-up building, two yellowed feet protruding from the rubble of a house.

The stench wafted over a wide area, borne on the hot, sticky air, but it was difficult to tell whether it was emanating from beneath the rubble or from bodies left out in the open.

THE MAGNITUED OF DESTRUCTION, AN UNASSAILABLE REALITY

While the number of dead remains a mystery, the magnitude of the destruction is an unassailable reality. In what had been a neighborhood in the middle of the camp, where concrete houses stood so close together that two people could barely pass in the alleyways, a zone roughly the size of two football fields was pounded into ruin.

But no one knows yet whether the enormous property damage - the pulverizing of perhaps 60 homes and apartment buildings, each of them two to four stories high - translates into a correspondingly large loss of life.

No reliable head count has been made of those who were inside the camp when the assault began or in the days immediately following. Many of the camp's 13,000 people fled after the Israeli assault started here April 3, when the camp was pounded by Israeli tank shells and helicopter-fired missiles.

COMMUNICATION BETWEEN DIVIDED FAMILY MEMBERS IMPOSSIBLE

Hundreds of families were separated in the tumult - fighting-age men were taken prisoner in mass Israeli roundups, some of the wounded eventually were brought or made their way to hospitals for treatment, and many women and children took shelter with relatives in outlying villages.

Many now said they have no idea where relatives and friends are. Communication between members of these divided families has been nearly impossible, except by word of mouth, because there is no telephone service and the batteries of most mobile telephones have run out, with no electricity to recharge them.

THE WORST CAME AFTER 13 ISRAELI OCCUPATION SOLDIERS WERE KILLED IN AN AMBUSH

Residents said the worst of the Israeli onslaught came after 13 Israeli soldiers were killed one week ago in an elaborate ambush in a booby-trapped building. It was the deadliest single incident for Israel's occupation army since the start of the current conflict nearly 19 months ago.

After that, people said, Israeli helicopters and tanks rained withering fire on the camp's central district. Then bulldozers were brought in to knock down buildings.

Israel has maintained throughout this offensive that it tried to ensure buildings were empty of civilians before demolishing them, but several families said they had little or no warning before their houses began falling down around them.

REMINSCENT OF 'SABRA & SHATILLA'

In the aftermath of the fighting, Jenin has become a rallying cry throughout the Arab world. Newspaper accounts and commentaries widely compared what happened in the camp to the 1982 killings of hundreds of Palestinian civilians by Christian militiamen at the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Beirut. An Israeli inquiry found Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, then the defense minister, indirectly responsible for those deaths.

SOURCE: JENIN, (Islamweb & News Agencies)

PHOTO CAPTION:

The charred remains of a body are seen in a partially destroyed home in Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, Tuesday, April 16, 2002. Israeli forces retained tight control of the camp, as part of its military offensive launched on March 29. Israel said it launched the offensive to track down and eliminate militants and their networks, capturing several towns, confiscating weaponry and detaining at least 4,000 Palestinians. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
- Apr 16 1:53 PM