In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school–
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
Randal Jarrell “LOSSES”
Jarrell was in USA military aircraft flying during World War II. A time when there was a real risk when such planes might be shot down. Now they will burn cities and kill people never seen without risk to themselves. Others who fly with impunity do the same.
One consequence of a dispute with Afghanistan has been a Pakistani strike on the capital, Kabul killing 408 people, who burned in their beds or were crushed by collapsing walls in a drug rehabilitation centre .Yousaf Rahim, a patient, said everyone was inside the wards when the explosion happened. “ It was a horrific scene. Patients fell from their beds, screaming and running as fire and smoke filled the wards and rooms,” he said.While some structures were still standing, Bunk beds stood in the open after roofs had collapsed, with blankets, mattresses and shoes strewn across the area. 265 people had been injured.
The people not seen are also routinely killed by missiles launched from the ground and by warships. At the very end of February the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school, Tehran l was hit by three desperate missile strikes fired from a USA warship. The roof of the school collapsed on students. At least 175 civilians were killed, over 100 of which were schoolchildren. Despite the USA’s Secretary of War describing the USA’s attack on Iran as “Operation Epic Fury”, his Department did its best to wriggle out of responsibility for these “hits”. In the case of a deadly strike on the town of Lamerd on the first day of the war they have tried to claim an Iranian missile was responsible, a claim disproved by analysis made by six separate experts.
Israeli police killed two young Palestinian brothers and their parents in the illegally occupied West Bank, shooting all four in the head and face as the family were driving through their hometown of Tamoun on their way back from a Ramadan shopping trip.The killings came hours after Israeli settlers had shot and killed Amir Moatasem Odeh, 28, in Qusra south of Nablus.