LEBANON: Israel continues its asault on southern Lebanon, forcing thousands out of their homes

Israeli warplanes pounded southern Beirut on Monday (July 24) as fighting between Hizbollah and Israel continued. Several refugees from the Rashidiya refugee camp, south of Tyre, were injured in overnight shelling and were taken to a nearby hospital. Civilians have taken the brunt of the 12-day-old conflict that has cost 369 lives in Lebanon and 37 in Israel, prompting U.N. emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland to demand a halt to the violence to allow aid to reach the hardest-hit areas. Egeland met Lebanese families who have fled the Israeli bombardment in south Lebanon and Beirut and taken refuge in a school. "These people are now telling the most terrible stories of having lost relatives. People from Sharifa in the south, have appealed to me to appeal to the armed actors to allow then to recover the dead who are under the rubble. For them to know, as the old woman said 'The dogs may be eating our beloved ones' is a terrible, additional mental scare," he said. In Beirut, Turkish nationals gathered and waited to be evacuated out of Lebanon. Families queued up early in the morning to get their passports checked as buses arrived to pick them up. Many said they plan to return to Lebanon once the fighting with Israel stopped. Some 1,600 evacuees arrived at Turkey's Mediterranean port of Mersin on the USS Trenton, an amphibious transport dock and one of the biggest ships involved in the evacuation. The ship was carrying mainly U.S. citizens, along with Australians and Canadians. It was the first large-scale arrival of U.S. citizens in Turkey since the start of the evacuation. The decks of the ship were crowded with people. People smiled and waved from the deck to shore as the ship docked after a journey of some 14 hours from Lebanon. Buses were waiting in the port to take the evacuees to the Incirlik air base. A total 918 Australian citizens also arrived in Turkey overnight on four ships bringing the number of Australian evacuess to pass through the country's Mediterranean port of Mersin to more than 1,600 over the last few days. Two ships carrying some 250 Canadians also arrived overnight and one of these vessels carried around 70 Brazilians. Some 2,350 Canadians have passed through Mersin since the evacaution began. There are 37,000 registered Canadians in Lebanon. "I do feel I am playing Israel's game by leaving, because the spirit now is that, once the foreigners have gone, then they will do the real cleaning and bomb anywhere. They are bombing anywhere anyway," said Canadian Robert Daudelin from Montreal.

ITN Source | July 24, 2006

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