Bombing respite gives Lebanon's war weary an exit

Bint Jbail, a town of about 25,000 residents, has strong links to the US as the population here has a history of emigrating to Dearborn, Mich., and some to New York.

"Many of the people here are American passport holders, and they will find them lying under the rubble in the weeks to come," says Issam Hijazi, from nearby Tibnine.

Despite its links with the US, there is broad support for Hizbullah in Bint Jbail. The local hospital is run by Hizbullah and named after Saleh Ghandour, who blew himself up in 1995 beside an Israeli army patrol in Bint Jbail. There were few Hizbullah men to be seen in the desolation, however. One plain clothes Hizbullah man clutching a walkie-talkie waved away photographers as he darted through the ruins.

"This is a disaster. Just because of a certain group of people, why did the Israelis have to destroy everything?" asks Sayyed Ali Hakim, a religious cleric who leaned heavily on his walking stick as he stumbled over the chunks of concrete and masonry in the street. The "certain group" he's referring to is Hizbullah.

"Israel took its revenge against civilians," he says. He paused, then adds, "What will it take to get our town back? It has returned to nothing."

Mr. Hakim was one of 70 people sheltered in the basement of his old stone house with no sanitation, no electricity, and dwindling supplies of food and water. "We ate and drank normally at first but as the fighting lengthened, we began rationing everything," he says.

The house was destroyed over their heads, although no one was hurt in the basement. "My cousin is still trapped under the rubble," he says, asking how she could be saved.

The Red Cross workers pressed further into the destruction of Bint Jbail Monday carrying stretchers while more lines of survivors with small children and plastic bags full of essentials trickled from the ruins.

Ibrahim Dakhlallah squeezed through a hole in a wall beside the town's sports stadium, wincing as he knocked his broken arm in a bloodstained sling. "I was praying in my house when a bomb exploded near me and hit my arm. I have shrapnel in my back and legs," he says.

A hysterical Laila Dakhlallah, wearing a full-length black chador, says that her two children had been killed in the fighting.

"I am going to stand and fight," she screamed. "George Bush is a criminal. I have lost my children and I don't care if I die. Everything dear to me has been taken away."

Laila and Ibrahim Dakhlallah are among some 15 people who had squeezed into a tiny room down some steps at the back of a two-story house. Five thin mattresses covered the floor.

Shelves that had been stocked with food were covered by white sheets. A small radio on a ledge was their one means of learning what was happening around them. Smashed glass covered the floor of the sitting room. In the kitchen, stuck to a glass-fronted cupboard, were cheerful family pictures of smiling children and parents.

On the wall of the sitting room was a framed sign saying in gold Arabic letters, "In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful."

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