AI Mission Diaries

Accounts of Al's missions investigating the situation in Lebanon and Israel.

Lebanon / Israel
Lebanon mission: update 3
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Sidon, 6th August

Today we went south of Beirut to Sidon, driving past more destruction to the infrastructure caused by Israeli bombardments. A huge bomb crater pits the road at one point, and cars are forced to drive carefully in single file over the makeshift 'bridge' of metal sheets that cover the enormous hole.

Meeting displaced people

Further on, we had to make a detour around a collapsed flyover destroyed by yet another Israeli air strike.

We met internally displaced people from several villages which we visited a few days ago, including survivors of the Israeli bombardments in Marwahin, Aitaroun and Srifa.

These people are living in makeshift centres for internally displaced people, mostly schools and public buildings.

The story of Aitaroun

Israeli attacks on Aitaroun have included air strikes and artillery fire. One man told us about the killing on 17 July of 13 civilians, including nine children and five elderly people. Nine more people were killed on the following day. Some of those who have survived the attacks on Aitaroun are still in hospital, and do not know that their relatives have been killed.

No way of knowing

We also spoke to one family from the Hay Mahfara area of Srifa who left on the first day of bombing, believing they would only be away for a day or two. More than three weeks later, they do not even know whether their home still exists or if it has been destroyed, like so many others. One woman, a mother of three children, told us she has heard rumours that her home has been destroyed, but also that it is still standing. She has no way of knowing.

Another man told us how his cousins visiting from Brazil were killed in an Israeli air strike three weeks ago. The entire family was wiped out. Aqil Mara'I and his wife Ahlam Jaber, both in their 30s, and their seven-year-old son Hedi and four- year-old daughter Zainab were all killed in an attack on the three-storey building where they were staying. Their bodies remained under the rubble until the following day.

The survivors of Marwahin

We met several survivors of the killing of 25 civilians, most of them women and children, from the Marwahin village on 12 July, on the first day of the conflict. After the Israeli army called on villagers to leave hundreds of people assembled in the main square of Marwahin, home to some 3,000 people, and from there walked to the base of the UNIFIL (United Nation Interim Force in Lebanon), near the village seeking shelter but were turned away. Some of the villagers went back home, too scared to take the road out of the village, and scores of others decided to leave in a convoy of several pick up trucks and cars.

The convoy was traveling on the costal road towards the town of Tyre but it came under Israeli artillery fire and had to turn back a couple of times and then continued. When it reached the vicinity of area of al-Bayada the convoy again came under fire and the second and third vehicles, a pick up truck and a car, were hit. The first shell was apparently fired by the Israeli navy, whose ships were besieging the Lebanese coast, followed by at least two missiles fired by Israeli helicopters. All the passengers of the pick-up truck and two passengers of the car behind it were killed and several others were injured.

The passengers of the first car said that they were too afraid to stop and continued on to Tyre, where they later learned of the fate which had befallen their traveling companions. The passengers of the other vehicles returned back to the village, where they said that they lived in fear of being killed until they were able to leave in the following days. Some elderly people remained in the village and their relatives have not been able to contact them for more than three weeks because access roads to the village and the electricity network in the area have been destroyed by Israeli bombardments since the outbreak of the conflict.

The families of two elderly men said they were worried that the two men may be dead and asked if we could help to find out what has happened to them. Some of the villagers from Aitaroun also told us their wives and children are still in the village but they do not know what has happened to them, and hoped we might be able to find news of them. However, neither we nor other NGOs or journalists have any way of helping. No one can go to this or other villages as anyone travelling on the roads which lead to most of the villages in South Lebanon would be at risk from Israeli air strikes and artillery fire.

Not able to pull people out of the rubble

A young man whose mother we looked for last week in the village of Ainata, told us that he is still without news of her since the beginning of the conflict. Last week, when he heard that we were in the area of his village he asked us to go to his mother's house to find out what has happened to her. When we reached the village we found it deserted, many of its houses destroyed, including the woman's house. We could look into the first two rooms of the house but the kitchen and bathroom were completely flattened and we could not establish if she was under the rubble, as this could not be shifted without heavy machinery. However, no such equipment was available in the village and no one could be brought in. When we visited the village, during the 48-hour suspension of air strikes announced by the Israeli authorities, heavy artillery fire continued around this and other villages in the area. Since then, Israeli bombardments have resumed in full and movement in and around most villages in South Lebanon is impossible.

We also met several families from the village of Srifa, which we visited a few days ago. We did not dare to tell these families about the extent of the destruction we witnessed in the village, where scores of houses have been literally pulverized by repeated Israeli air strikes and the bodies of some of the villagers remain buried under the rubble of their homes.
# 5:57 PM

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Israel mission: update 3

Nahariya, 06/08/06

Today our mission headed further north to the city of Nahariya, which sits about five miles from the Lebanese border and is one the cities that has been hardest hit by the rockets. According to the municipality and police officials, approximately 350 rockets have hit inside the city limits and another 450 in the surrounding area. The municipality told us that two people have been killed and 68 injured in the city and estimates that over 1,000 houses have been damaged. Ordinarily Nahariya is a busy tourist town in the summer, but when we arrive it is virtually deserted.

Visiting Western Galilee Hospital

After a short briefing by the city spokesperson, we headed to the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. The hospital estimates it has treated 1,300 patients, about 65% of which were for psychological trauma. Others were more seriously injured including a storekeeper from Nahariya who lost his leg when a rocket fell near his store. The hospital had built an elaborate underground facility, including everything from a dialysis unit to an underground network of roads. The deputy director of the hospital told us they built the underground part of the hospital hoping they would never have to use it. Shortly after the war began, they were able to move many of the hospital's essential functions either underground or to safer parts of the hospital. The hills of Lebanon are clearly visible from the north facing windows.

Hospital within firing range

The hospital, did in fact sustain a direct hit. A rocket hit a patient's room a few days after the patients on that floor had been moved elsewhere. Although only one room was hit directly, all the rooms that we saw on the floor had clear signs of damage. While we were inspecting the damage, the sirens went off for the first of many times today, and we took the opportunity to look at the underground facility.

Underground we saw everything from patients getting their regular dialysis treatments, to a day care centre for the children of employees to people who had been injured. Some of the injured were older residents who fell while running to shelters including a 66- year old woman who broke her thigh when she fell down the stairs while trying to get to the shelter in her building's basement and an 84-year old woman who fell when a bomb exploded near the shelter she was in when she was trying to get to the shelter's bathroom. We also talked to a 13-year old boy who was injured in the same incident that killed five people in Acre the day before we arrived. The boy's mother said she considered that day to be his birthday, because he was born again since he was only injured and not killed in the explosion.

Among the other patients we met was a five-year-old boy from the Arab village of Maj'd al-Krum who was injured by the same missile that killed two of his uncles. He was eating ice-cream in his uncle's car when the bomb hit.

Visiting public shelters

From the hospital we went to visit some of the public shelters, where many of the cities' residents have spent the past 26 days mostly underground. The emotions of the people we spoke to ranged from resignation, to indignation, to barely suppressed rage. In the first shelter we visited, most of the people were not sleeping in the shelters since there had been fewer rockets at night, but many spent the entire day there, going out only for an hour a day to shop or run other errands. There was about 20-40 in the shelter, including around five children. We were told that the family with children was sleeping in the shelter. Several people we met told us that families with children were being much more cautious.

Overwhelming fear

In the second shelter we visited, which was only one block away, the situation was much different. The shelter was "home" to around 40 people, including 10 children. Most of them had been living there 24 hours a day since the first rockets hit Nahariya on the second day of the conflict. Since they were so close to the border, they told us, that the sirens often go off after the bombs hit or simultaneously. This made many of them too afraid to step outside. One woman told us "We do everything in fear. We eat in fear, we sit in fear. We shower in fear. We sleep in fear." All of the people we spoke to in the shelter told us that their nerves were shot and rubbed raw. The main problem was that they did not know when it would end.

Update: Haifa hit by several rockets

As we were leaving Nahariya, we heard that Haifa had been hit with several rockets. We arrived shortly after the those who had been killed and injured had already been pulled from the rubble and taken to the hospital. We visited three of the sites that had been hit, including one building that had collapsed entirely, and two others that were badly damaged. Again we saw the signs of the metal marbles that we have seen at all the other sites that had been hit by the rockets.

We then headed to Rambam Hospital to try to gather information about the casualties. The hospital reported that three people had been killed and they had over 60 casualties. The other two hospitals in the city had received over 100 casualties. Most of the casualties, however, were treated for shock and released, although they were still compiling figures for the other injuries.

While we were there, they had just begun the process of evacuating over 100 patients from the oncology ward into the basement. Unlike Nahariya which had a purpose built facility, they were simply moving patients into what used to be a storage are they had airconditioned on an emergency basis. The maternity ward and the pediatric intensive care had been moved earlier. These facilities all used to have a view of the ocean facing north. In the past this had provided patients with what was thought was a restful view to help with the healing process. With the recent round of missiles hitting the city, the circumstances, we were told, it had simply become too dangerous.

# 5:48 PM

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Sunday, August 06, 2006

Lebanon mission: update 2

The last two nights have seen some of the heaviest bombardment of Beirut. More civilian infrastructure has been destroyed. Today we visited Baalbak in the Beqaa valley.

Beqaa Valley, 5th August

We drove up to the Beqaa Valley town of Baalbak today, about 150 km east of Beirut and famous for its ruins of Roman temples. At about 10 am, as we were passing by the village of Hilanya, there was an Israeli air strike on a fuel truck outside a small garage on the main road, setting the truck ablaze. Thick black smoke rose above the flames as the traffic was diverted and villagers hurried away from the main road and from the burning truck.

Repeated Israeli air strikes on the town have forced close to 80% of the population of Baalbak â€“ some 120,000 - to flee. Entire neighbourhoods and suburbs are now totally deserted. Clothes hang from washing lines and cats scurry around the streets but most of the residents have left in the past two weeks. We drove through eerily silent neighbourhood after neighbourhood.

Baalbak City, 5th August

Several neighbourhoods in Baalbak have been totally destroyed by repeated Israeli bombardments. Whole blocks of houses have been reduced to lumps of rubble. Several residents have been killed in such attacks and as a result the remaining inhabitants have been forcibly displaced by the fear of such attacks. The families have moved elsewhere, flooding other cities and towns. At least 800,000 of people have been forcibly displaced from their homes by the frequent Israeli bombardments, and a country with a population of less than 4 million is struggling to cope. Some have fled to neighbouring Syria or to other countries, but hundreds of thousands are sleeping in schools and public parks.

In Baalbak we heard from eyewitnesses, including medical doctors, about how an entire family was wiped out in an Israeli air strike. During the night of 1 and 2 August, a family of agricultural workers, a husband and wife and four of their children, aged between three and fifteen were killed, and their other three children, aged from nine months to nine years, were seriously wounded, when Israeli forces launched scores of missiles into several areas of Baalbak. In the same night the air strikes killed several other people, including a pregnant woman and two children in a nearby neighbourhood.

We later investigated the reported killings of at least 23 agricultural workers in an Israeli air strike on 4 August (yesterday) on the village of al-Qaa, North of Baalbak. A local priest told us that he witnessed the air strike from the roof of his church compound. He said that as he was preparing to leave to go to the scene of the attack to offer assistance another missile hit the same farm. He rushed there and found that at least 23 Syrian agricultural workers, including at least five women, had been killed and several others injured.
# 8:43 PM

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Israel mission: update 2

Northern District, 5th August

On the second day of our mission, we started the day in by meeting with the director of health services for the Northern District. She is responsible for coordinating health services for approximately 1,200,000 residents, which she says is split equally between Jewish and Arab residents. Later in the day we met with the director of the mayor's office in lower Nazareth.

She explained that main difference between this conflict and ones in the past, was that many Israeli cities, towns and villages that had never been hit before by rockets were being hit for the first time. This has meant that people were not prepared, and a major impact from a public health perspective has been from people experiencing psychological trauma and anxiety. They were also helping people cope with the psychological effects of being in or in and out of shelters for 25 straight days. They had learned from past experience in dealing with trauma victims that the earlier counseling was provided the lower the long term effects were so they were trying to provide counseling to victims as soon as they could.

While the government has been trying to get as many people as possible to evacuate, many are unable or unwilling to leave. And in many cases evacuating people who were elderly or with major health problems presented logistical challenges. The government mobilized ambulances, physicians, and paramedics to move people to safety, but we were told that two elderly patients still died while being transported to safer parts of the country. According to the health ministry, about 2/3 of the populations of the population had fled from the Northern District.

For the population that is left, in addition to providing psychological services, they were dealing with the challenges of trying to provide the same basic health services they were providing in the past as well as additional health challenges presented by the civilians living in the shelters. Even with mobilizing all of its resources the authorities were only able to visit a small percentage of the shelters to make a health assessment. In cities like Nahariya and Kiryat Shmona which had been particularly hard hit, trying to provide services like chemotherapy and kidney dialysis was straining hospitals and other facilities already coping with people who had been injured.

Nazareth, North Israel, 5th August

We then went to Nazereth which is the largest Arab city in Israel. Two children had been killed in Nazareth while playing outside in the early days of the conflict. We were told that at the time there were no sirens functioning, so the children, young brothers who were outside their home playing, had no warning. The municipality representative told us that even if they had heard a siren, shelters in Arab areas are virtually non-existent, although the reasons behind this is something we need to continue to follow up on. In Nazareth most of the population has not left, although some of the more affluent residents had fled. About 50% of the population lives below the poverty line.

We also met with representatives of two women's groups who were helping Arab women deal with the conflict. In addition to dealing with their own stress over the rockets falling on Nazareth and nearby, they were also responsible for caring for their families. Since none of the nursery schools or kindergartens had shelters or safe rooms, they had to be closed down.

On our way out of town the sirens went off again. This time there was no were no formal shelters, but we were invited by local shopkeepers into a backroom that had no windows and was relatively safe. But the majority of the people nearby just looked at the sky. Today, the media reported that three more Israelis, all Arabs, were killed. Yesterday, reports stated that three Israelis were killed and today three more were killed. All of the those who have died since we have arrived have been Israeli Arabs.

Clearly the Israeli health and other services are pressed to their maximum to cope with the conflict, and that is with their infrastructure still in place. We wondered what the other half of our delegation was finding in Lebanon, where most of the infrastructure had been destroyed.
# 8:40 PM

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Lebanon Mission: update 1

In village after village, we saw a similar story: evidence of families leaving quickly, abandoning food and laundry as though they didn't expect to be away for long. The bodies of people killed in their homes in several villages are still under the rubble. In some villages the stench of rotting corpses is unbearable. Roaming dogs often offer an indication of where the bodies are buried.

South Lebanon , 31 July-1 August

Several corpses were removed during the 48-hour air strike suspension announced by the Israeli authorities. In some areas the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Lebanese Red Cross could not reach places where the bodies lay, because there were no guarantees from the Israeli military that they would be safe.

Bint Jbail

It was left to journalists to pull bodies from the rubble and carry them on doors to ambulances waiting in less exposed areas. Three journalists in Bin Jbail told us how they had carried bodies, and had also found a distressed woman digging with her bare hand and pleading with them to help her find her sister under the rubble of a demolished house - she had not been able to approach the house before because of the continuous Israeli fire in the area. They helped her and eventually found two elderly women, one of them disabled and bed-ridden, and an elderly man alive under the rubble. The disabled woman had been soiling herself after days in her bed and her brother had had to tie her hands because she was biting them and ripping her skin.

Srifa

In Srifa, where during the night of 18-19 July some 15 people were killed in their homes, we saw a head sticking out of the rubble of a demolished house; the body was entirely trapped under heavy rubble which could not be moved without heavy machinery which is not available in the village. Several other bodies remain but cannot be reached at all.

In several villages, we gathered many stories about the impact of this conflict on people's daily lives:

Supermarkets have been destroyed seemingly as part of the drive to force out remaining villagers who had remained in spite of having been cut off from outside supplies.

Electricity lines were destroyed in the first attacks, so people were cut off from the outside world as they could not recharge their mobile phones. The few places with landlines - hospitals, some municipal buildings - found them cut early on.

All along the way to south Lebanon, petrol stations were shelled from the first few days and as trucks have been the target of air strikes from the outset, it has become impossible for fuel supplies to reach petrol stations in villages. The lack of fuel is an acute problem, making it difficult and in many cases impossible for villagers to leave, and for those wishing to remain to get outside supplies. Any remaining petrol supplies are very expensive.

People are afraid to travel on the roads, and not just in the South. Even just outside Beirut, those who do get on the road are terrified of being anywhere near trucks, even small trucks, as these have been particularly targeted. Drivers take additional risks to overtake and get away from trucks as fast as they can - even open trucks carrying fruit and vegetables - as they are seen as likely targets.

The massive and rapid displacement of people from their villages in the south and the difficult or impossible communication links between those in the southern villages and the outside world have made it difficult to help the internally displaced people, or even to know who has gone where and when.

Hospitals and other centres are completely overwhelmed. Relatives of southern villagers who are elsewhere in the country are panicked. They told us that they have no means of getting news of their relatives in the South, and have not been able to go there due to the danger of road travel.

Without telephone or TV, news had travelled mainly through journalists, humanitarian workers and others who have been moving between villages, but families in more isolated house have been completely cut off, terrified to stay, and terrified to leave.
# 1:26 PM

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Israel Mission: update 1

Arriving in Tel Aviv, 4th August

The mission arrived in Tel Aviv and headed straight up to north to Haifa. The day we left had one of the highest civilian death tolls in Israel since the conflict began three weeks ago so we were expecting the situation to be tense.

Haifa

From Haifa, the first stop on our agenda was visiting the city of Carmiel. Driving through Haifa on our way to Carmiel we could see several buildings that had been damaged in recent rocket attacks. Usually on a Friday morning both Carmiel and Haifa would be bustling with people doing their shopping for the Sabbath. But we were all very surprised at how quiet they were, Carmiel in particular was virtually empty of people on the streets.

Carmiel

We met up with people from the Carmiel municipality who took us to see several houses that had been hit by Hizbullah rockets. In the first house we visited, a rocket had came through the roof of one apartment and went through the floor to the apartment below. Luckily no one was home at the time on the top floor and no one was seriously injured below. Both apartments are currently uninhabitable.

The municipality estimates that 30% of the population have left the city. The way they have been trying to measure the number of people who were still there and who have left is by counting the number of trash bins that are empty and those that are full. The municipality, as other municipalities throughout the country, are working to provide basic services to those residents who are spending most of their times in shelters or afraid to leave their homes. When we pulled up to the building there were over a dozen volunteers packing up meals to deliver to people who were still in the city. They estimated they provided food to about 2,500 people per day.

Acre

From Carmiel we moved on to Acre, where again we met with people from the municipality. Acre is a mixed city with a large Israeli Arab population (Palestinian citizens of Israel). Acre was even more deserted than Carmiel, because the day before five people had died when they left their shelter prematurely.

We were told that two of the people who died were killed by small steel balls that have been packed into the rocket's warhead. In addition to killing and injuring many civilians, everywhere we saw places where rockets had hit we saw evidence of these still balls, with walls, windows, and even steel fences damaged and often with the steel balls still embedded.

Most of the sites where rockets have hit have been cleaned up and repaired, but we were able to visit a kindergarten that had been hit, although again luckily no children were there at the time.The soundtrack for the day was the sound of air raid sirens and rockets.

Over 10 times during the day we had to seek shelter when the air raid sirens went off, including three times while driving where the only thing we could do was pull over quickly and do the best we could to lay low.

Across from the kindergarten we met an 85 -year-old woman who spent most of her time sitting right outside the shelter because she was blind and unable to make it up and downstairs every time the sirens went off.

We did hear reports that in many Arab neighborhoods the air raids sirens either aren't working or aren't present.

For us, it was just one day, but many Israelis have been living like this for weeks.
# 1:15 PM

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