Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 26, 1994 TAG: 9402260082
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEROME DELAY ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HEBRON, OCCUPIED WEST BANK LENGTH: Medium
Then shots rang out.
A bearded gunman in an Israeli army reserve uniform, his face shrouded in a white scarf, stood at the mosque entrance near the tomb of the biblical matriarch Sarah. He fired his Galil rifle, which can spit out 750 bullets per minute.
The shooter, immigrant physician Baruch Goldstein of Brooklyn, N.Y., was about one yard from the closest line of worshipers. Their backs were turned to him.
When the first clip was spent, he threw a grenade, emptied three more magazines and hurled two more grenades, said a surviving worshiper, Abdel Hafez Idries.
There was no escaping. The killer stood between the worshippers and the only way out.
Several minutes later, when the 38-year-old father of four was done shooting, the off-white walls of the mosque in the Tomb of the Patriarchs compound were splattered with blood.
The slaughter stopped only with Goldstein's own death.
Worshiper Maher Imam said survivors clobbered Goldstein with shoes, chair legs and a fire extinguisher, and one man gripped Goldstein's throat.
"It was so slippery from the blood that I fell twice to the ground," said Imam, 39.
Survivors carried out the dead and wounded on prayer mats and straw carpets. They used strips of clothing and Arab kaffiyeh head scarfs to bandage wounds.
"I carried seven dead outside," said Mohammed Abu Saleh, a mosque guard. "I carried with my hands two boys, about 8 or 9 years old. Both were dead. I started crying."
The mosque's muezzin, or prayer caller, Jamil Natshe, had been struck by grenade shrapnel that ripped apart the back of his skull and killed him instantly, Abu Saleh said.
Several soldiers were posted outside but apparently could not get in to stop the gunman, said Israeli Cabinet Minister Yair Tsaban, speaking after being briefed by army officials.
"There is only one entrance, and once the shooting started, there was a massive rush on the entrance," Tsaban told reporters.
"An army officer in charge tried to get inside when he heard the shooting. He was pushed out by the worshipers who were trying to get the injured out."
As word of the massacre spread in Hebron, a Palestinian town of 80,000, private cars and vans began pulling up in front of the downtown compound to take the wounded to hospitals.
At Ahli Arab Hospital, set on a hilltop on the outskirts of town, dozens of ambulances and cars streamed into the parking lot crowded with thousands of Palestinians seeking word on the fate of their relatives.
The hospital soon was surrounded by Israeli troops seeking to disperse the crowd and enforce a curfew. Anguished Palestinians in the fenced-in parking lot and on nearby rooftops pelted the soldiers with stones, cursing the Israeli army and PLO chief Yasser Arafat.
Militants using loudspeakers urged the crowd to step up the violence and "confront the soldiers."
Doctors from the hospital argued for calm.
Soldiers began opening fire, and over the next two hours pumped hundreds of rounds into the parking lot, until a cease-fire was negotiated by army officials and Palestinian leaders.
In the chaos, Palestinians on rooftops threw buckets of water at people in the parking lot below to force them to step aside and make room for arriving ambulances.
Doctors announced the blood types for which donors were sought and hundreds of people lined up. Several hours after the shooting, hospital officials posted a list at the gate with the names of those killed.
Outside the Ibrahim Mosque, about 40 settlers, most of them armed with Uzi submachine guns, mingled with dozens of soldiers.
Palestinians cursed at them from windows. Their laments mingled with the echoing chants of muezzin reciting the Koran.
"God, take the settlers away, they are killing us," wailed one woman.
by CNB