BEIRUT: There are few signs now to recall the horrors of the massacre, but those Palestinians who survived the Christian militiamen's slaughter during Israel's invasion of Lebanon 25 years ago cannot forget the corpses, the screams and the gunfire.
The small cemetery bears insignificant witness to the nightmare of those three days of slaughter in Sabra and Shatila, now impoverished shantytowns where barefeet children run through narrow alleys at the southern entrance of Beirut, the Lebanese capital.
But Nawal Abu Rudeina, 31, vividly remembers the bloodshed that started a quarter of a century ago on Sunday in which she lost so many close relatives.
She was six years old when the massacre started and Israeli-allied Christian militiamen went on a killing spree at the camps, surrounded by Israeli forces, to "avenge" the murder two days earlier of president-elect Bashir Gemayel, a militia leader.
Even today, the memory obviously pains Abu Rudeina: "Everywhere we walked, there were corpses. We would recognise a relative here, a neighbour there," she said.
Between 800 and 2,000 Palestinian civilians, and 100 Lebanese, died as Israeli troops watched the militiamen carry out mass murder in Sabra and Shatila.
Ariel Sharon who was Israel's defence minister at the time was forced to resign a year later after a special Israeli investigative panel declared him to be "personally responsible" for the massacre.
"I was six years old. The Israelis fired flares, and we could see as if it was broad daylight," Abu Rudeina said.
"A Lebanese woman rushed in to warn my father that militiamen were coming to kill us. He told her 'stop it, you are scaring the children,' but she insisted," she said.
The woman recalled how she had watched the terrifying scenes of the killings while hiding in a small house.
"We heard cries, voices shouting: 'you are terrorists, we will exterminate you'."
The family was finally found by the militiamen and Abu Rudeina lost 16 relatives. Among them were her father and pregnant sister whose foetus was extracted from her body by a militiaman.
"They (militiamen) were high on drugs, we saw needles and drugs on the floor," said the woman who escaped the massacre with her mother and siblings.
Another survivor, Mahmud Al Saka, now 32, said: "They killed people with bayonets, even small children.
"They lined up the men against a wall and shot them," he said.
On the morning of the second day of the massacre, two gunmen of Israel's proxy Free Lebanon Army militia banged on the door of Saka's family home in Shatila camp. "They made us all go out, barefoot. Corpses covered the streets," said the electrician.
He said the militiamen forced the refugees to get close to a large pit near the camps, where they attempted to humiliate the women by forcing them to ululate.
"After that, they let the women and children go. We heard shouting, then nothing," he said, adding: "We never found my father and my uncle."
A group of survivors had tried to launch a lawsuit in Belgium against Sharon and an Israeli army general over the Sabra and Shatila massacre, but in September 2003 a Belgian court threw out the case.
The small cemetery bears insignificant witness to the nightmare of those three days of slaughter in Sabra and Shatila, now impoverished shantytowns where barefeet children run through narrow alleys at the southern entrance of Beirut, the Lebanese capital.
But Nawal Abu Rudeina, 31, vividly remembers the bloodshed that started a quarter of a century ago on Sunday in which she lost so many close relatives.
She was six years old when the massacre started and Israeli-allied Christian militiamen went on a killing spree at the camps, surrounded by Israeli forces, to "avenge" the murder two days earlier of president-elect Bashir Gemayel, a militia leader.
Even today, the memory obviously pains Abu Rudeina: "Everywhere we walked, there were corpses. We would recognise a relative here, a neighbour there," she said.
Between 800 and 2,000 Palestinian civilians, and 100 Lebanese, died as Israeli troops watched the militiamen carry out mass murder in Sabra and Shatila.
Ariel Sharon who was Israel's defence minister at the time was forced to resign a year later after a special Israeli investigative panel declared him to be "personally responsible" for the massacre.
"I was six years old. The Israelis fired flares, and we could see as if it was broad daylight," Abu Rudeina said.
"A Lebanese woman rushed in to warn my father that militiamen were coming to kill us. He told her 'stop it, you are scaring the children,' but she insisted," she said.
The woman recalled how she had watched the terrifying scenes of the killings while hiding in a small house.
"We heard cries, voices shouting: 'you are terrorists, we will exterminate you'."
The family was finally found by the militiamen and Abu Rudeina lost 16 relatives. Among them were her father and pregnant sister whose foetus was extracted from her body by a militiaman.
"They (militiamen) were high on drugs, we saw needles and drugs on the floor," said the woman who escaped the massacre with her mother and siblings.
Another survivor, Mahmud Al Saka, now 32, said: "They killed people with bayonets, even small children.
"They lined up the men against a wall and shot them," he said.
On the morning of the second day of the massacre, two gunmen of Israel's proxy Free Lebanon Army militia banged on the door of Saka's family home in Shatila camp. "They made us all go out, barefoot. Corpses covered the streets," said the electrician.
He said the militiamen forced the refugees to get close to a large pit near the camps, where they attempted to humiliate the women by forcing them to ululate.
"After that, they let the women and children go. We heard shouting, then nothing," he said, adding: "We never found my father and my uncle."
A group of survivors had tried to launch a lawsuit in Belgium against Sharon and an Israeli army general over the Sabra and Shatila massacre, but in September 2003 a Belgian court threw out the case.
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