Lebanese and Aid Groups Find Dangers in the Rubble

[Englander]

August 25, 2006

The Destruction

Lebanese and Aid Groups Find Dangers in the Rubble
By ROBERT F. WORTH and JOHN KIFNER

RAB AL-THALATIN, Lebanon, Aug. 24 — The main street of this tiny village, as with many towns in the arc of destruction throughout southern Lebanon, looks as if several tornadoes crashed through it.

Most of the houses have been reduced to heaps of rubble or hollowed-out shells.

Although nearly all of the roughly 900,000 refugees — about a quarter of the Lebanese population — who fled the monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas have returned over roads pocked with bomb and artillery craters, fully a third cannot move back into their family homes, aid agencies say. The homes are ruined or are too dangerous to inhabit because of unexploded cluster bombs, which have killed 11 people and wounded 43 since the cease-fire began 10 days ago, the agencies say. “The main problem is their houses are destroyed or its too dangerous because of unexploded ordnance,” said Reem Alsalem, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Lebanon, the United Nations and independent aid agencies are totaling an enormous tally of damage that includes airports, ports, water and sewage treatment facilities, electrical plants, 80 bridges and 94 roads, more than 25 gas stations, 900 other businesses and 30,000 homes or shops.

The war destroyed a major piece of the economic recovery in Lebanon, which was counting on a record year for tourism.

But here, far from the glitter of Beirut, what surprises the villagers is what they see as mean, gratuitous destruction by Israeli soldiers still stationed nearby after the cease-fire took effect: water and electricity systems smashed, furniture and valuables shattered or burned, cars shot up or destroyed.

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