- SIDON, Lebanon (IPS) - The
Israeli attack on Qana has taken the biggest toll of the war, but it is
only one of countless lethal attacks on civilians in Lebanon.
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- Large numbers fled the south after Israelis dropped leaflets
warning of attacks. Others have been unable to leave, often because they
have not found the means. The Israelis have taken that to mean that they
are therefore Hezbollah.
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- Israeli justice minister Haim Ramon announced on Israeli
army radio Thursday that "all those in south Lebanon are terrorists
who are related in some way to Hezbollah."
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- Justifying the collective punishment of people in southern
Lebanon, Ramon added, "In order to prevent casualties among Israeli
soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should
be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops move in."
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- This policy explains the large number of wounded in the
hospitals of Sidon in the south..
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- Wounded people from southern Lebanon narrate countless
instances of indiscriminate attacks by the Israeli military.
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- Thirty-six-year-old Khuder Gazali, an ambulance driver
whose arm was blown off by an Israeli rocket, told IPS that his ambulance
was hit while trying to rescue civilians whose home had just been bombed.
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- "Last Sunday people came to us and asked us to go
help some people after their home was bombed by the Israelis," he
said from his bed in Hamoudi Hospital in Sidon, the largest in southern
Lebanon. "We found one of them, without his legs, lying in a garden,
so we tried to take him to the nearest hospital."
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- On way to the hospital an Israeli Apache helicopter hit
his ambulance with a rocket, severely injuring him and the four people
in the back of the vehicle, he said.
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- "So then another ambulance tried to reach us to
rescue us, but it too was bombed by an Apache, killing everyone inside
it," he said. "Then it was a third ambulance which finally managed
to rescue us."
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- Khuder, who had shrapnel wounds all over his body, said
"this is a crime, and I want people in the west to know the Israelis
do not differentiate between innocent people and fighters. They are committing
acts of evil.. They are attacking civilians, and they are criminals."
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- At Labib Medical Centre in Sidon, countless survivors
of Israeli bombardment had similar stories to tell.
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- Sixteen-year-old Ibrahim al-Hama told IPS that he and
his friends were hit by an Israeli bomb while they were swimming in a river
near a village north of Tyre.
-
- "Two of my friends were killed, along with a woman,"
said al-Hama. "Why did they bomb us?"
-
- In an adjacent room, a man whose wife and two small children
were recovering from wounds suffered in Israeli bombing told IPS that they
had left their village near the border because the bombings had become
fierce, and the Israeli military had dropped leaflets ordering them to
leave.
-
- "We ran out of food, and the children were hungry,
so they left with my wife and her sister in a car which followed a Red
Crescent ambulance, while another car took the two other sisters of my
wife," he said. "They reached Kafra village, and an F-16 bombed
the car with my wife's two sisters. They are dead."
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- Such killings have been common throughout the south.
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- On July 23, a family left their village after Israelis
dropped leaflets ordering them out. Their car carried a white flag, but
was still bombed by an Israeli plane. Three in the car were killed.
-
- The same day, three of 19 passengers in a van heading
away from the southern village Tiri were killed when it was bombed by an
Israeli plane.
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- A 43-year-old man from Durish Zhair village south of
Tyre lay at the Labib Medical Centre with multiple shrapnel wounds and
half his body blackened by fire.
-
- "Please tell them to stop using white phosphorous,"
he said. "The Israelis must stop these attacks. Do not allow the Israelis
to continue murdering us." He and his family were bombed in their
home.
-
- Zhair said his family were scattered in hospitals and
refugee centres in Sidon and Beirut. But in the hospital hallway outside
his room, head nurse of the hospital Gemma Sayer said "all of his
family is dead. We cannot tell him yet because he is so badly injured."
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- United Nations forces have been targeted again by the
Israelis. Two soldiers with the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon
were wounded after their observation post was damaged in an Israeli air
strike.
-
- Last week, an Israeli missile killed four UN observers;
an attack that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described as "apparently
deliberate."
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- Thousands of angry protestors stormed the UN building
in Beirut Sunday after at least 34 children and 20 adults were killed inside
a shelter targeted by an Israeli air strike in the southern town Qana.
-
- As Israeli military drones buzzed over the capital city,
smoke was seen rising from the building as UN troops struggled to control
the crowds.
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- Efforts to evacuate the wounded in Qana have been hindered
because roads around the town have been destroyed by air strikes.
-
- The Israeli military refused to take responsibility for
the Qana deaths, because they said Hezbollah had used the village to launch
rockets.
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- Lebanese President Emile Lahoud told reporters Sunday
that the Qana attack was a "disgrace" and that there was no chance
for peace talks until an immediate ceasefire was called. "Israel's
leaders think of nothing but destruction, they do not think of peace."
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- Prime Minister Fuad Siniora described the bombing in
Qana as a "war crime." At least 600 Lebanese, mostly civilians,
and 51 Israelis have been killed since the conflict began.
-
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