Hizbullah turns its attention to rebuilding southern Lebanon

As refugees flood back to their war-ravaged villages, Hizbullah has flung itself to the front of the burgeoning reconstruction effort in southern Lebanon, funded with a deluge of petro-dollars from neighbouring Iran.

"We want to bring south Lebanon back to life and rebuild it better than it was before the war," said Nabil Kaouk, Hizbullah's top official in southern Lebanon, standing before the group's flattened headquarters building in Tyre.

In nearby villages, his supporters were already hard at work. Hizbullah activists in T-shirts and green caps cleared rubble-strewn roads and piles of rotting refuse, and ferried the dead and wounded through the scrub-covered hills in shiny modern ambulances.

But the most extravagant element of Hizbullah's plan is to provide a year's rent and a set of new furniture for every family whose house has been destroyed. The promise was made by Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, within hours of Monday's ceasefire.

The housing scheme will benefit 15,000 families, Mr Nasrallah said, and will cost up to $150m, according to one estimate. Funding will come from oil-rich Iran, which until now has mostly supplied Hizbullah with thousands of missiles used against Israel.

Yesterday in Beirut, hundreds of refugees shuffled through a registration centre where officials noted their losses and made promises of help. The cash will be spent in towns such as Bint Jbail, near the southern border, where entire neighbourhoods have been razed.

"There is no central government presence here. Hizbullah is doing everything," said local official Hamed Harab, standing outside the bomb-pocked town hospital.

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