Civilians, aid groups take advantage of 24-hour window in Lebanon

Civilians drove toward Tyre, white flags fluttering from their cars, buses and pickup trucks. Some people headed the other way to check on their homes or help relatives trapped in villages by Israel Air Force bombing.

Two United Nations aid convoys left Lebanon's capital Beirut on Monday for the southern port of Tyre and the village of Qana, where IAF strikes killed at least 54 civilians the day before.

World Food Program spokesman Robin Lodge said by telephone from the convoy that nine trucks were going to Tyre with aid for Palestinian refugees and six trucks would go on to Qana with food and medical supplies.

International aid agencies were hoping to take advantage of a 48-hour Israeli suspension of air strikes on southern Lebanon to deliver much needed aid and help get people out of the area, devastated by daily bombardments since July 12.

Normally, Tyre is about an 80 minute drive from Beirut but IAF bombing of the main coastal highway means trucks have to take a circuitous route through the mountains and along narrow dusty tracks, adding four to five hours to the journey.

Lodge said the UN hoped to send a third convoy to Bint Jbail on Tuesday, the town near the border where Israel Defense Forces troops fought fierce battles with Hezbollah guerrillas last week.

International aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres said Monday it hoped to get supplies from Tyre to another border village called Rmeish on Tuesday if the suspension of IAF strikes made it safe.

The United Nations estimates up to 800,000 people have been displaced by the bombing and fighting in southern Lebanon but many civilians are still trapped, too poor to get transport or too scared to run the gauntlet of air strikes.

Several flights also landed in Beirut on Monday with aid supplies. Two Egyptian planes arrived with equipment for a field hospital, two planes brought aid from the United Arab Emirates and a French plane brought seven tons of supplies.

A Jordanian air force plane was also sent from Amman with a shipment of emergency supplies from UNICEF, the United Nations children's aid organization.

The cargo included 350 family water kits and 200,000 doses of Vitamin A, which will be administered in centers hosting displaced people to safeguard children against infectious diseases.

Also Monday, rescue workers began the gruesome task of digging up dozens of bodies from under the rubble of at least three villages in south Lebanon.

Israel's three-week offensive in Lebanon has killed around 550 people, mostly civilians. Officials and security sources say there are scores of bodies under the rubble of destroyed houses in a cluster of villages near the border with Israel.

Lebanese Health Minister Mohammad Khalifeh put the number of unrecovered bodies at 200, which would take the death toll to 750 in Lebanon. Fifty-one Israelis have also been killed.

Civil defense workers were using a bulldozer to clear rubble from where around 30 civilians were believed buried under houses destroyed in an IAF strike in the village of Sreefa two weeks ago.

Other workers were trying to retrieve bodies in two nearby villages close to the border with Israel.

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744783.html