Lebanese assess their losses

The rising death toll in Lebanon prompted an emotional response. A tearful Siniora said that Israel's bombardment of Lebanon – ignited when Hizbullah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border ambush – has set "our country back decades. We are still in the middle of shock." Siniora said initially that 40 people had died in the village of Houra, though he amended that later to one dead. "If these horrific actions are not state terrorism, then what is state terrorism?" he asked.

The shock has weighed most heavily on Lebanese civilians, who comprise most of the more than 900 who have died in southern Lebanon and Shiite southern districts of Beirut. More than 90 Israelis, most soldiers, have died in rocket attacks on Israel.

"We need to force the Israeli aggressor to stop its aggression, and to withdraw behind the blue line," said Siniora, noting Lebanon's further request for return of Shebaa Farms, exchange prisoners, and provide border-area maps of land mines.

For those standing amid the debris in front of Bahar's office building, the toll on the Israeli side yields little sympathy. A mattress hangs limply across telephone wires; receipts from the medical warehouse on the ground floor flutters in the breeze.

When asked whom he blames for the destruction, Bahar's neighbor, Esam, answers firmly. "The Israelis, of course," he says. "They are barbarians."

That feeling was widely voiced as people gathered belongings in plastic sacks or luggage, and walked, or consoled neighbors.

'This is my home,' said Sermad, who lingered, downcast, in front of the burning rubble, sometimes choking on the smoke. 'The third floor; I don't know where now.'

His refrigerator lay on its side in the street, its door ripped off. He picked up someone else's photo album and leafed through it. Then he saw a closet's worth of children's clothing strewn about and sprinkled with concrete and dust.

"These are their clothes," said the father of four. "These are their school uniforms."

As Sermad mourned, tears flowed between two women. One had just emerged, looking shell-shocked, from the building adjacent to the one destroyed. She shouted "Salim! Salim!" for a nearby male relative.

She found a neighbor, Fadia Dergham, and they hugged. Ms. Dergham had moved out with her sister the day before. "I feel normal," said Dergham. "We were expecting this." "By chance yesterday, we left," said her sister Samia. "And we came back to see this."

But their building was not the only one targeted Monday. Lebanese ambulance workers raced to one building after receiving a call that there might be survivors.

They arrived to find "Scouts of the Islamic Message,'' a branch of a Hizbullah young men's civil defense unit climbing into crevasses of collapsed buildings.

Scouts crawled down into the rubble hoping for any sign of life. Most of these suburbs have been empty for weeks, so Israeli strikes now cause few casualties.

One medic joked that he and other medics "sleep standing up." But, "any more difficult, I cannot imagine."

Page: 1 | 2