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<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>> <BR>> <BR>> <BR>>
>>'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?'<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>Robert Fisk - The Independent<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds.<BR>>
>>"Mehdi Hashem, aged seven - Qana," was written in felt pen on the bag in<BR>>
>>which the little boy's body lay. "Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 - Qana",<BR>>
>>"Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one - Qana." And when the Lebanese soldier went<BR>>
>>to pick up Abbas's little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy<BR>>
>>might have done on his father's shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were<BR>>
>>56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries,<BR>>
>>and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they<BR>>
>>wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust,<BR>>
>>most had blood running from their noses.<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us<BR>>
>>watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an<BR>>
>>atrocity - yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the "pinpoint<BR>>
>>accuracy" it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that<BR>>
>>missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town<BR>>
>>of Qana - as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister,<BR>>
>>Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening " western<BR>>
>>civilisation" - as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people.<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>And in Qana, of all places. For only 10 years ago, this was the scene of<BR>>
>>another Israeli massacre, the slaughter of 106 Lebanese refugees by an<BR>>
>>Israeli artillery battery as they sheltered in a UN base in the town.<BR>>
>>More than half of those 106 were children. Israel later said it had no<BR>>
>>live-time pilotless photo-reconnaissance aircraft over the scene of that<BR>>
>>killing - a statement that turned out to be untrue when The Independent<BR>>
>>discovered videotape showing just such an aircraft over the burning<BR>>
>>camp. It is as if Qana - whose inhabitants claim that this was the<BR>>
>>village in which Jesus turned water into wine - has been damned by the<BR>>
>>world, doomed forever to receive tragedy.<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>And there was no doubt of the missile which killed all those children<BR>>
>>yesterday. It came from the United States, and upon a fragment of it was<BR>>
>>written: "For use on MK-84 Guided Bomb BSU-37-B". No doubt the<BR>>
>>manufacturers can call it "combat-proven" because it destroyed the<BR>>
>>entire three-storey house in which the Shalhoub and Hashim families<BR>>
>>lived. They had taken refuge in the basement from an enormous Israeli<BR>>
>>bombardment, and that is where most of them died.<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>I found Nejwah Shalhoub lying in the government hospital in Tyre, her<BR>>
>>jaw and face bandaged like Robespierre's before his execution. She did<BR>>
>>not weep, nor did she scream, although the pain was written on her face.<BR>>
>>Her brother Taisir, who was 46, had been killed. So had her sister<BR>>
>>Najla. So had her little niece Zeinab, who was just six. "We were in the<BR>>
>>basement hiding when the bomb exploded at one o'clock in the morning,"<BR>>
>>she said. "What in the name of God have we done to deserve this? So many<BR>>
>>of the dead are children, the old, women. Some of the children were<BR>>
>>still awake and playing. Why does the world do this to us?"<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>Yesterday's deaths brought to more than 500 the total civilian dead in<BR>>
>>Lebanon since Israel's air, sea and land bombardment of the country<BR>>
>>began on 12 July after Hizbollah members crossed the frontier wire,<BR>>
>>killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others. But yesterday's<BR>>
>>slaughter ended more than a year of mutual antagonism within the<BR>>
>>Lebanese government as pro-American and pro-Syrian politicians denounced<BR>>
>>what they described as "an ugly crime".<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>Thousands of protesters attacked the largest United Nations building in<BR>>
>>Beirut, screaming: "Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv," and Lebanon's<BR>>
>>Prime Minister, the normally unflappable Fouad Siniora, called US<BR>>
>>Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ordered her to cancel her<BR>>
>>imminent peace-making trip to Beirut.<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>No one in this country can forget how President George Bush, Ms Rice,<BR>>
>>and Tony Blair have repeatedly refused to call for an immediate<BR>>
>>ceasefire - a truce that would have saved all those lives yesterday. Ms<BR>>
>>Rice would say only: "We want a ceasefire as soon as possible," a remark<BR>>
>>followed by an Israeli announcement that it intended to maintain its<BR>>
>>bombardment of Lebanon for at least another two weeks.<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>Throughout the day, Qana villagers and civil defence workers dug through<BR>>
>>the ruins of the building with spades and with their hands, tearing at<BR>>
>>the muck until they found one body after another still dressed in<BR>>
>>colourful clothes. In one section of the rubble, they found what was<BR>>
>>left of a single room with 18 bodies inside. Twelve of the dead were<BR>>
>>women. All across southern Lebanon now, you find scenes like this, not<BR>>
>>so grotesque in scale, perhaps, but just as terrible, for the people of<BR>>
>>these villages are terrified to leave and terrified to stay. The<BR>>
>>Israelis had dropped leaflets over Qana, ordering its people to leave<BR>>
>>their homes. Yet twice now since Israel's onslaught began, the Israelis<BR>>
>>have ordered villagers to leave their houses and then attacked them with<BR>>
>>aircraft as they obeyed the Israeli instructions and fled. There are at<BR>>
>>least 3,000 Shia Muslims trapped in villages between Qlaya and Aiteroun<BR>>
>>- close to the scene of Israel's last military incursion at Bint Jbeil -<BR>>
>>and yet none of them can leave without fear of dying on the roads.<BR>>
>><BR>>
>>And Mr Olmert's reaction? After expressing his "great sorrow", he<BR>>
>>announced that: "We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult<BR>>
>>incidents [sic] this morning. We will continue the activity, and if<BR>>
>>necessary it will be broadened without hesitation." But how much further<BR>>
>>can it be broadened? Lebanon's infrastructure is being steadily torn to<BR>>
>>pieces, its villages razed, its people more and more terrorised - and<BR>>
>>terror is the word they used - by Israel's American-made fighter<BR>>
>>bombers. Hizbollah's missiles are Iranian-made, and it was Hizbollah<BR>>
>>that started this war with its illegal and provocative raid across the<BR>>
>>border. But Israel's savagery against the civilian population has deeply<BR>>
>>shocked not only the Western diplomats who have remained in Beirut, but<BR>>
>>hundreds of humanitarian workers from the Red Cross and major aid<BR>>
>>agencies.<BR>> >><BR>>
>>Incredibly, Israel yesterday denied safe passage to a UN World Food<BR>>
>>Programme aid convoy en route to the south, a six-truck mission that<BR>>
>>should have taken relief supplies to the south-eastern town of<BR>>
>>Marjayoun. More than three quarters of a million Lebanese have now fled<BR>>
>>their homes, but there is still no accurate figure for the total number<BR>>
>>still trapped in the south. Khalil Shalhoub, who survived amid the<BR>>
>>wreckage in Qana yesterday, said that his family and the Hashims were<BR>>
>>just too "terrified" to take the road out of the village, which has been<BR>>
>>attacked by aircraft for more than two weeks. The seven-mile highway<BR>>
>>between Qana and Tyre is littered with civilian homes in ruins and<BR>>
>>burnt-out family cars. On Thursday, the Israeli Army's Al-Mashriq radio,<BR>>
>>which broadcasts into southern Lebanon, told residents that their<BR>>
>>villages would be "totally destroyed" if missiles were fired from them.<BR>>
>>But anyone who has watched Israel's bombing these past two weeks knows<BR>>
>>that, in many cases, the Israelis do not know the location in which the<BR>>
>>Hizbollah are firing missiles, and - when they do - they frequently miss<BR>>
>>their targets. How can a villager prevent the Hizbollah from firing<BR>>
>>rockets from his street? The Hizbollah do take cover beside civilian<BR>>
>>houses just as Israeli troops entering Bint Jbeil last week also used<BR>>
>>civilian homes for cover. But can this be the excuse for slaughter on<BR>>
>>such a scale?<BR>> >><BR>>
>>Mr Siniora addressed foreign diplomats in Beirut yesterday, telling them<BR>>
>>that the government in Beirut was now only demanding an immediate<BR>>
>>ceasefire and was not interested any longer in a political package to go<BR>>
>>with it. Needless to say, Mr Jeffrey Feltman, whose country made the<BR>>
>>bomb which killed the innocents of Qana yesterday, chose not to attend.<BR>>
><BR>>
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