Bloodshed: Rescuers crack

2006-07-31 16:07

Beatrice Khadige

Qana - Naim Raka, 50, crawls under the rubble at Qana, emerging three times with a different dead child clutched to his chest.

Finally, the rescue worker's nerves crack and the tears flow.

"Stop asking me questions, stop asking me for figures. Can't you see for yourselves the horror around you?" the southern Lebanese village's civil defence chief shouts at journalists before regaining his composure and resuming his task.

When it comes to bloodshed, Raka thought he'd seen it all but what he witnessed in Qana after Israeli air strikes on Sunday killed at least 52 people hiding in a basement shelter has profoundly moved him.

"I saw women in the foetal position, pushed against the wall thinking it would protect them, but the opposite happened.

"Their choice was fatal, the walls collapsed on them," says the grey-haired man between sobs.

Of the 25 civil defence workers and 55 local Red Cross volunteers working around the southern port of Tyre, 15 have been wounded while two ambulances and a rescue bulldozer have also been destroyed since the assault began on July 12.

"My worst experience was pulling charred bodies from a van in Marwahin. I saw burnt children, I had to pull out arms and legs. It was unbearable.

"I still have nightmares about it," says Ismail Shahine, an unemployed 22-year-old who became a rescue volunteer two years ago.

'My heart is as black with sadness...'

Eighteen people, including 11 children, were burnt alive on July 15 when the van in which they were fleeing the bombardment - having been told to do so by Israel - was itself targeted by an Israeli helicopter near the village of Marwahin.

All the rescue workers say the toughest part of the job is dealing with the children. At least 30 of them were killed in the strike on Qana, where two rescue workers seek more bodies amid the smell of dust and death.

"My heart is as black with sadness as the shirt I'm wearing and I have no more tears because I know that each time I find a dead child, I will find worse next time," says Abu Ali, 42, wearing the rescue worker's black uniform.

"I see terrible suffering, but the worst comes from children because they don't understand what's happening," says the veteran of 23 years as a rescue worker.

"Every time I try to pull a child from the rubble, my heart breaks when they struggle and shout 'I want to stay with my mother' while, often, she has already died. It's devastating."

With wrapped-up bodies lined up in Qana and Israeli warplanes pushing their bombardment on surrounding hills, Khaled Yazbeck has worked for the civil defence since 1986 and says this "war is the worst because it's the most bloody".

In 19 days of bombing, shelling and missile attacks, 750 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 2 000 wounded, most of them civilians, or about 40 dead per day, according to an official toll.

- AFP