Journalist reports on own father's death

A PALESTINIAN journalist working for a British newspaper in Gaza has written of how the conflict became a personal tragedy when his father was killed in an Israeli air strike.

Fares Akram wrote in The Independent yesterday how his father, Akrem al-Ghoul, died on Saturday as Israeli tanks entered Gaza after a week of air strikes.

Israeli forces split Gaza in two

Israeli ground troops and tanks cut swaths through the Gaza Strip early Sunday and surround its biggest city.

"The phone call came at around 4.20pm on Saturday. A bomb had been dropped on the house at our small farm in northern Gaza. My father was walking from the gate to the farmhouse at the time," Akram wrote.

He said the farmhouse north-west of Beit Lahiya was a "beloved place" where his father had decided to stay to look after their dairy cows when the Israeli military operations began.

"But shortly before sunset on Saturday, as Israeli ground troops and tanks invaded Gaza in the name of shutting down Hamas rocket sites, the peace of that place was shattered and my father's life extinguished at the age of 48," he wrote. More

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