The Pulitzer Series: The Chatilla Massacre

It was the end of the summer of 1982, and the residents of Lebanon were starting to relax a bit, having spent months witnessing a seemingly endless stream of conflict and battle.

Suddenly, Bashir Gemayel, the Lebanese President-Elect was assassinated. Two days later, Christian militiamen bent on revenge for his death, entered and sealed off the Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps and massacred over 900 unarmed Palestinan civilians.

For two days, journalists were unable to get into the camps, although we knew there was a story inside. At 6:30 A.M. on Saturday morning, I returned to the camps with a colleague from the Associated Press. The gunmen were no longer guarding the entrance. We parked the car, and walked slowly into the camp.

The humid silence was oppressive. Nothing was moving. In a place where I had made many friends, and hundreds of photographs, it was many things, but never silent.  Usually, kids were yelling and playing, women were talking, dogs were barking, cars horns were honking.... but, on this morning, all was quiet.

I was surrounded by piles of what, at first glance, looked like garbage, but as my brain started to work, I realized it was piles of corpses. The smell of decay was everywhere, as many of those killed had been dead for over 24 hours, in the September heat.

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of the Chatilla Massacre