Dulce Et Decorum Est

But even as Olmert expressed willingness to consider the Lebanese initiative, he said his security Cabinet would meet Wednesday to consider deepening Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon, which has now advanced about 4 miles, according to the army.

Leaflets dropped by Israel in southern Lebanon on Monday night and Tuesday declared an effective no-drive zone south of the Litani River. The ban emptied the streets of Tyre, the main city in the area, and left remaining civilians in villages across the south unable to flee.

A military spokeswoman said the ban did not apply to Red Cross and United Nations relief convoys traveling in coordination with the Israeli army. She said the ban had been imposed in an attempt to choke off supplies to guerrillas who have continued firing rockets into northern Israel. On Tuesday about 160 rockets landed in communities across northern Israel, the army said, causing damage to property and several injuries.

… In Israeli artillery and air strikes across southern Lebanon, buildings were bombed in Ghaziyeh, a Shiite town southeast of Sidon, killing 13 people after a funeral for 15 people killed Monday, hospitals reported. Witnesses said one of the houses hit belonged to a cleric linked to Hezbollah, but it was unclear whether he was a casualty. The army said it had targeted buildings used by senior Hezbollah officials and had no information on casualties.

In a southern suburb of Beirut, workers pulled 14 more bodies from the rubble of two buildings struck by Israeli aircraft Monday, raising the death toll from that attack to 30, The Associated Press reported.

One of the victims was Ali Rmeity, 45, who lost three children when missiles slammed into his building, AP reported. Rmeity and his wife were badly wounded; his only surviving son was in intensive care. Rmeity’s parents, three brothers and two sisters were also killed.

Nearly 700 people have been killed in Lebanon in four weeks of fighting, most of them civilians, and more than 100 Israelis have died, 39 of them civilians.

Joel Greenberg, Chicago Tribune (2006-08-08): Israel targets any vehicle in south Lebanon

Tyler Hicks/New York Times (2006)

Hundreds of people today poured in to Tyre, Lebanon, chasing a rumor that a U.N. evacuation ship would come.

TYRE, Lebanon, July 20 — … The morbid reality of Israel’s bombing campaign of the south is reaching almost every corner of this city. Just a few miles from the Rest House hotel, where the United Nations was evacuating civilians on Thursday, wild dogs gnawed at the charred remains of a family bombed as they were trying to escape the village of Hosh, officials said.

Officials at the Tyre Government Hospital inside a local Palestinian refugee camp said they counted the bodies of 50 children among the 115 in the refrigerated truck in the morgue, though their count could not be independently confirmed.

Abdelmuhsin al-Husseini, Tyre’s mayor, announced on Thursday that any bodies not claimed in the next two days by next of kin would be buried temporarily in a mass grave near the morgue until they could receive a proper burial once the fighting ends.

… With the roads and bridges to many surrounding villages bombed out, few families have come to the hospital to claim their dead.

Even if they could make the journey, they would fear being hit by airstrikes along the way, Mr. Husseini said. Emergency workers have been unwilling to brave the risk of recovering many bodies left along the road, leaving them to rot.

For those relatives who reach the morgue, conducting a proper burial is impossible while the bombing continues. Many have opted to leave the bodies at the morgue until the conflict ends.

The morgue has had to order more than 100 coffins with special handles to make it easier to remove them from the ground to be reburied later.

What? He wants a hundred? a local carpenter said, half shocked, half perplexed. Where the hell am I going to get enough wood to build that many coffins?

… A pall overtook Tyre on Thursday, as United Nations peacekeepers loaded more than 600 United Nations employees, foreigners and Lebanese onto a ferry to Cyprus, then promptly packed up their makeshift evacuation center at the Rest House and left for their base in the town of Naqura.

Hundreds descended on the hotel on Wednesday, desperate to board the ferry. Despite fears that many would be left behind, almost all who sought refuge were able to board the ship Thursday.

But as the last United Nations peacekeepers left town on Thursday, those who remained braced for an even heavier bombardment.

For Ali and Ahmad al-Ghanam, brothers who have taken shelter in a home just a few blocks from the morgue, the refrigerated truck of dead bodies is a vivid reminder of the attack that killed 23 members of their family.

When Israeli loudspeakers warned villagers to evacuate the village of Marwaheen last Saturday, the families packed their belongings and headed for safety. More than 23 of them piled into a pickup and drove toward Tyre, with the brothers trailing behind. Another group set off for a nearby United Nations observation post, but were promptly turned away.

As the pickup raced to Tyre, Ali al-Ghanam said, Israeli boats shelled their convoy, hitting the car and injuring the women and children in the back. But within minutes an Israeli helicopter approached the car, firing a missile that blew the truck to pieces as the passengers struggled to jump out, he said.

His brother Mohammad, his wife and their six children, were killed instantly along with several of their relatives. The only survivor in the car was the brothers’ 4-year-old niece, who survived with severe burns to much of her body.

–Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times (2006-07-21): In Scramble to Evade Israeli Bombs, the Living Leave the Dead Behind