Refugees overwhelm Lebanon

Once the enchanting tree-lined preserve of sweethearts and families alike, Beirut's small Sanaya Park has been turned into a campground by hundreds of Lebanon's war refugees.

"God help us, we did not even take our shoes," cries Halima Doughan, who brought her eight children here when the Hizbullah-Israeli conflict erupted July 12 and bombs fell close to her home near the airport.

As workers Tuesday assembled water and shower facilities – bracing for swelling numbers coming here as on-the-ground fighting spreads – the displaced know they are just one small part of a severe humanitarian crisis now engulfing Lebanon.

In hardest hit areas, the level of destruction resembles that of the Chechen capital Grozny. The UN estimate of 700,000 displaced resembles, in scale, the mass exodus from Rwanda in 1994, Kosovo in 1999, and for years from Sudan and Central Africa.

Southern Lebanon and parts of the southern suburbs of Beirut – all Hizbullah strongholds – have becoming virtually empty of people. UN and Lebanese officials estimate that some 70 to 80 percent of the population south of the Litani River – the line beyond which Israel told people to evacuate – have gone.

"You can't send assessment teams, because a dead aid worker is not a benefit to anybody," says Khaled Mansour, the chief UN spokesman in Lebanon. "So nobody knows exactly how many are still there, or exactly their needs. But we know pieces of the puzzle: places that need food, or water, or that need to bury bodies."

The scale of human misery inflicted by just three weeks of war is creating new stress on a society that is being forced to resurrect survival instincts honed by 15 years of civil war in the 1970s and 80s.

In the Sanaya park, food is short, and often bought with dwindling cash. Water comes from large plastic UNICEF cisterns, placed beside the now-dry park fountain. A first-aid tent provides donations from those living in neighboring apartment blocks, who watch the refugee sprawl from their balconies.

The fighting, during which Israel has shelled fleeing civilian vehicles, relief convoys, and ambulances, has complicated aid efforts. Tuesday, Israeli warplanes continued to pound southern Lebanese villages and and Israeli soldiers battled Hizbullah fighters. On Monday night the Israeli Security Cabinet decided to expand the ground offensive some four miles into southern Lebanon.

The UN estimates that at least 750 Lebanese civilians have died so far and 3,200 have been wounded. Some 200,000 people have fled the country during Israel's bombardment with tens of thousands of shells and bombs and Hizbullah's strikes against northern Israel with some 1,700 rockets.

That level of violence and destruction has resulted in a relief scramble in this country where war-time emergency teams left years ago. Israel's declared 48-hour suspension of airstrikes, meant to enable more people to flee and to get aid into the south, has barely changed the relief equation, the UN and relief workers say.

Three UN convoys made it to needy southern points of Naquora, Rmeish, and Tibnin Tuesday; two convoys made it to Qana and Tyre Monday. On Sunday, Israel did not allow a convoy to Marjayoun.

But the UN has the capacity for six convoys a day, which add up to 30 to 60 trucks, each one carrying 15 to 20 tons of supplies. The World Food Program is bringing its own trucks in via Syria, to set up a more secure pipeline.

Despite these humanitarian efforts, UN offices were ransacked by hundreds of violent protesters Sunday, in the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Qana, which killed 65 civilians who had been sheltered in a basement. At the UN, lobby windows were smashed and a fire was started on the first floor.

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