South Lebanon bears war's brunt

The basement halls were filled with shocked-looking refugees. Frightened children sat with their mothers and sisters as doctors and relatives hurried by.

Three-year-old Nimr Rmeity had a bandage on his head where he was struck by shrapnel Sunday when a missile hit a nearby house, killing his uncle Mohammed and wounding 16 others.

A family from Shaytieh, south of Tyre, sat in silence. "This is Israeli terror, but we will resist," a girl said softly.

The ancient Phoenician port of Tyre, which reaches into the Mediterranean on a causeway built by Alexander the Great, suffered multiple airstrikes Sunday. Other than the hospital, a 12-story building where the Lebanese civil defense units were based, was hit by a missile, killing 20 people.

"It was the most terrifying night of my life," said Ghassan Raad. "We sat in the basement of my apartment building just waiting for a bomb to fall and kill us. This morning, we couldn't stand it and we all left for the north."

"We left immediately when we heard the warning not stopping to pack of even bring money," says Ali Hijazi, who undertook the perilous trip from Aitaroun along cratered roads to the sea front Rest House hotel in Tyre which has become a refugee center. "We saw people in Bint Jbeil and other places pleading at us to stop and take them, but we had no room. There was nothing we could do for them," he adds.

Mr Hijazi says that the village had run out of basic food and there was almost no drinking water left.

Hundreds of foreign tourists, visiting Tyre's world famous archaeological ruins, also have found themselves trapped by the war. "What are the Israelis doing? It's madness. Why isn't the world doing anything to stop this?" asked a shaken Anne-Marie Casales, a French woman vacationing with her teenage daughter and son. "I have been calling my family in Paris and none of them know what's happening down here."

Most of the foreign media have been stuck north of the Litani River, unable to report on the situation. Reaching Tyre, normally an hour's drive from Beirut down the coastal highway, has become a tortuous and tense five-hour ordeal via the Chouf mountains.

The winding roads were clogged with traffic as refugees inched northward to the relative safety of Beirut. But by the time the southern market town of Nabatieh was reached, the roads were empty and the skies were filled with the roar of Israeli jets and the whine of drones. A half-hour drive along an old road beside the Litani led to the newly built causeway, for now the only lifeline connecting the south to the rest of the country.

Even the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) has found itself unable to dispatch urgently needed relief convoys into the beleaguered villages of the border area to evacuate terrified residents or supply drinking water and basic staples.

A convoy of Chinese UNIFIL engineers dispatched to recover the bodies of the Qudsi family outside Tyre was forced to turn back when the road it was traveling along came under fire from artillery and Israeli navy gunboats.

UNIFIL's civilian staff have been evacuated from its headquarters in the coastal village of Naqoura, one mile north of the border, and have taken refuge in the Rest House hotel on the Tyre sea front.

Although UNIFIL is pressing the Israelis to allow it freedom of movement in the south, the peacekeepers estimate that its supply of fuel for trucks and armored personnel carriers will run out by the weekend which will completely paralyze the force until it can be resupplied from Beirut.

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