Testimonies

Subhiyah al-Wazir, widow

I live with my husband, '‘Abed al-Wazir, in the Sabih building in Ras al-'‘Ein, Nablus .

On Tuesday, 16 October, around 2 a.m., my husband woke me and said that army troops were in the neighborhood. I looked out the window through which you can see the building's staircase and saw a few soldiers standing on the stairs. We didn't go back to sleep. Until 4 a.m., every once in a while we heard a steady stream of gunfire and a loud, frightening noise. We didn't know what was happening outside.

Around 4 a.m., my son Shaqer, who lives on a street parallel to ours, phoned us and said that soldiers were calling out on a loudspeaker to the residents of our building to go outside. I also heard the calls. Shaqer said that everyone else in our building had already gone outside, and that the army apparently wanted to demolish the building.

We opened the door to the house to go outside, and a second before we stepped out, my husband asked me if I'd taken my ID card. I said that I hadn't. I turned around to go and get it. At that moment, I heard two shots. My husband fell to the floor and said he had been hit. I asked him where, but he didn't answer. I saw blood coming from his mid-section. I screamed, '“Abu Shaqer has been killed'…. Help me'…'”

My neighbor, Umm Ri'ad, and her son, along with the sons of other neighbors, Nimer and Hilal Sabih, came to see what happened. Outside, I saw our neighbors and three soldiers standing on the steps leading to our house, about fifty meters away. They aimed their weapons at our house.

The neighbors lifted my husband from the floor and took him outside. Umm Ri'ad and I followed them out. I saw lots of soldiers on the steps leading to the building, their weapons aimed at us. They ordered Nimer and Hilal to go to them. The soldiers cuffed their hands and pushed them into a sitting position on the ground.

Then they called to Ri'ad and cuffed his hands too. I held my husband, who was lying on the ground and bleeding badly. The sight drove me mad, and I shouted, '“They've killed him, call an ambulance'…'” I repeated this time and again, and then one of the soldiers ordered me to shut up.

Around 4:30, our neighbors in the Sabih building summoned an ambulance. A Red Crescent ambulance arrived at about 4:45. The paramedics put my husband into the ambulance and took him to hospital in Nablus . I went along with him. At the hospital, they treated him for an hour and a half or two hours, but the doctors couldn't save his life and said he was dead.

I am in terrible shock. I don't understand how this happened to us. The soldiers had ordered us to come out of the house, and we were just getting ready to go outside.

Subhiyah Khalil Muhammad al-Wazir, 65, widow and mother of six, is a homemaker and a resident of Nablus. Her testimony was given to Salma a-Deba'i at the witness's home on 17 October 2007.