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Old,
Sick and Weary Emerge From Rubble
The Australian
Lebanon
August 2, 2006
An elderly resident of Bent Jbail drinks after surviving for six days without food or water.
The elderly man stumbled over the rubble, his suit hanging off his shrunken frame, his loose pants held together by a pin.
"I haven't seen the sun for 20 days," said 73-year-old Mehdi al-Halim.
Next to him, his wife balanced a bag of clothes on her head as she tried to pick her way over the wreckage of bombed-out buildings.
About 200 Lebanese, many elderly, struggled to safety yesterday after hiding with little food as battling Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah guerillas brought the town down around them.
As the siege lifted, they emerged from their shelters, dehydrated, starving, some in their 70s or 80s. Some started to walk out of devastated Bent Jbail. Two died on the road - one of malnutrition, the other of heart failure, a doctor said. Others waited for ambulances.
"All the time I thought of death," said Rima Bazzi, an American who hid with her two daughters, son and mother in a doctor's house. "The bombing never stopped. I didn't go out. I was too afraid. I just thought I would die."
She had left her husband behind in Dearborn, Michigan, to holiday with her children in the town.
While she was there, the Israeli offensive began, and with it the bombardment of the town. Then things got worse: Bent Jbail, a Hezbollah stronghold, became the objective in an Israeli ground assault. For eight days, guerillas and soldiers fought the bloodiest battles of Lebanon's conflict, until the Israelis pulled back at the weekend.
Mr Halim and his wife, Shamiah, survived alone in their house. In the last days of the siege, their food and water ran out. "Every day we had only one candy each," he said.
Ms Halim, a petite 65-year-old with wire-rimmed glasses, talked about her children as she struggled towards a waiting ambulance. Three of her daughters were in Beirut but two of her children were in the US. "My son is a doctor, in Boston," she boasted.
Most of the town's population of 30,000, along with many visitors from the West holidaying with relatives, fled during the first weeks of bombardment.
Those who remained were either too old to make the journey, or had children and feared the road, which was eventually cut off by bombs and missiles.
Early in the day, some had to walk to the nearest hospital in Tibnin, 8km north. Later in the day, the road was cleared and ambulances could make it in to clear others, such as Rasnam Jumma, a diabetic with a partially amputated foot who had run out of her diabetes medicine five days previously.
The Israeli assault on Bent Jbail cut a swath of destruction through the centre of the town. Houses were flattened, the faces of multi-storey buildings sheared off. Girders, snapped by the force of explosions, fell to the road.
Rocket fire gouged holes in a cement portrait of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that stood at the foot of Bent Jbail's main street. Yet Hezbollah flags hung defiantly on shattered buildings.
A man in his early 30s appeared from the ruins, refusing to give his name.
"I can't give you my name ... the resistance (Hezbollah) fighters are all my friends." He said fighters were still in the town. "They can see you, but you can't see them."
He had sent his wife and two sons to Beirut 10 days into the war. The sons promptly went to Hezbollah's al-Mahdi Scouts, a youth group, some of whose members become guerillas.
"If I die, they will continue my fight," the man said. "Do you think I like this? But I have to fight. You say, why don't I leave? Why should I leave? This is my land."
Overall, 18 Israeli soldiers died in the siege - eight of them, including Australian-Israeli Asaf Namer, in a single Hezbollah ambush.
The military claimed to have killed up to 50 guerillas, though Hezbollah acknowledged only about half that.
Israeli officials said the battle was tougher than expected in Bent Jbail, a town with deep symbolism for Hezbollah. Nicknamed "the capital of the resistance", it showed vehement support for the Shia guerillas during the 1982-2000 Israeli occupation.
When Israel pulled back on Saturday, it said it never meant to take Bent Jbail, only to wear down Hezbollah. But the guerilla group claimed victory in holding off Israeli forces.
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