Militants hid under rubble to survive

‘‘It’s a miracle I survived this unimaginable demolition,’’ said Ala’a, 23, of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. ‘‘The resistance will resume soon, but I’ve had to change my daily routine. I stay out of sight as much as possible, and sleep in a different place almost every night. I keep my mobile phone switched off so the Israelis can’t trace the frequency.’’

Mohammed, 25, a fighter for the Islamic radical group Hamas, said all militant units were dug in and primed for battle when the Israeli Army crashed into Jenin on April 3. He said fighters initially parried infantry advances by shooting into narrow alleys, but had no reply to bombardment from Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships.

‘‘Each of us slept only one hour per day and we lost sense of time, we got so exhausted. We were so few against so many.

‘‘On the eighth day, those huge armoured bulldozers came in which, combined with snipers who started shooting from the tops of the highest buildings, dramatically narrowed our room for movement. Our casualties began to soar,’’ he went on. ‘‘We started scrambling from house to house. We smashed holes in the walls to pile through and keep moving.’’

Mohammed and other survivors in his unit, their ammunition gone, finally took cover in a basement. ‘‘We could hear the bulldozer roar in and the house collapsing on top of us.’’ Israel says bulldozers moved in only after trapped militants ignored repeated appeals by loudspeaker to give up.

(Reuters)