Word: militiamen
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...wore on, the sounds of violence from the camps became more sporadic. In the afternoon, the militiamen began covering up their handiwork. Around 3 p.m., a European diplomat saw a bulldozer backing down a side street of Shatila. Its scoop was filled with bodies...
Hours later, members of a Red convoy that had reached hastily arranged bodies piled near the entrance to Shatila. They were mixed with sand and dirt and had apparently been moved there by bulldozers. The militiamen also began knocking down houses. In some parts of Shatila, residents who had survived the horrors of the previous night were crushed as their houses caved in around them...
Still more carnage was to come. On Saturday morning, the militiamen advanced into the heavily populated camp of Sabra, bordering Shatila on the north. Using bullhorns, they announced to terrified residents that they were Israelis, and demanded that the Palestinians assemble in the street. Some heeded the call, while others were forced from their homes at gunpoint. The wailing, screaming throng was in a state of collective hysteria. Said one man who survived the ordeal: "We knew what they had been doing in Shatila. We were sure our time had come." The militiamen fired into the air several times...
Casual acts of murder were still taking place as the roundup progressed. One man, who had hid in a partly bombed building, later related how he had peered through a small shrapnel hole while militiamen barged into a small shop across the street. The gunmen cut the throat of the proprietor, who was hiding inside, and then guzzled a bottle of whisky. At Gaza Hospital the staff of 22 doctors and nurses, mostly Europeans, were rounded up and marched away. As the medics passed a group of lounging militiamen, a Palestinian male nurse was pulled out of the group, taken...
...interrogation was turned over to Israeli soldiers across the street from Shatila. Soon the Palestinian civilians who had been rounded up in Sabra began following them. But these had one last ordeal to face. As the crowd of several hundred panicky refugees approached the southern gate of Shatila, the militiamen segregated them by sex. The men were ordered to march past a parked Land Rover. From inside the vehicle, a man pointed out those who should be separated from the rest. The selected ones were led away. Their fate is unknown...