The besieged people of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp got a terrifying glimpse this month of the shape of war to come.
Disturbing sounds of crying infants and women were audible throughout the camp. When they went out to investigate, “Israeli quadcopters reportedly opened fire directly at them,” the award-winning Palestinian journalist Maha Hussaini reported for Middle East Eye. The quadcopters – small, cheap, and disposable drones usually used for civilian photography and, more recently, military reconnaissance – had been blasting the sorrowful recordings as a lure.
Once the lure worked, it created a self-fulfilling prophecy: those who ran to help the fake victims became real ones. Residents struggled to help those real victims as the “quadcopters were firing at anything that moved,” eyewitness Samira Abu al-Leil, a 49-year-old Nuseirat resident, told Middle East Eye. …..more
