PARIS, June 16: The figures speak louder than words, says a spokesman for the Organization of Young Arab Lawyers, who has revealed during a Paris press conference that 106 people were killed, thousands injured and mutilated and another 300 arrested as a result of the Israeli incursion into Jenin between March 1 and May 7.

“We are here,” said the spokesman, “to demand that the truth be finally told with regard to what really happened, not only in terms of numbers, but also with regard to the way people in Jenin were made to die.”

Indeed, says the spokesman, of the 106 people who died in the Jenin refugee camp, almost one-half of the number — 51 — “died horribly,” for the simple reason that the Israeli army forbade them access to medical treatment.

The lawyers held their conference — which was also attended by the deputy mayor of Jenin, Adnan Al-Subah — before a packed crowd of journalists, who were told that they had come to Paris to persuade French authorities to “unveil the truth” with regard to what really happened at the refugee camp in Jenin.

Not only was 35 per cent of the refugee camp destroyed as a result of the recurrent bombing by tanks belonging to the Israeli army, averred Al-Subah, also “during the most violent part of the Israeli presence, in the space of only ten days, seventy persons were killed, indeed executed, while 559 others were injured, most of them quite seriously.”

Al-Subah says that he is insisting before his French contacts that France, with its long tradition of supporting Palestinian liberation, do something to allow the truth “at long last” to be told about the most recent Israeli incursion into Jenin.